6502.org

Yes, but did he give you a raise as well? You can't buy groceries with air, fresh or not.

I find that macros help make code clear, correct and compact.

It was actually the "compact" attribute that caused me to learn to use them in the first place. A project I was writing using the Merlin64 assembler was running out of room in memory for source code, and I wanted to avoid disk-based assembly over the slow serial connection of the 1541 drive. The frequent necessity of moving 16-bit quantities around suggested that a 16-bit "MOVE" macro would be a good candidate for reducing overall code size. So it did, but alas this only delayed and did not ultimately eliminate the need for disk-based assembly.

Still, once the macro was written to recognize several address mode variants, the resulting clarity of the code was useful enough in itself to make the whole exercise worthwhile. The basic ideas used were easily extended to 16-bit add, substract, compare, etc., macros. These weren't used as often as MOVE but were just as helpful in the "clear" and "correct" attributes.

I use quite a few different macros, both to synthesize MPU instructions and to reduce typing. Two I use a lot are PRINTCHR (print a charactor) and PRINTSTR (print a null-terminated string). In particular, typing PRINTSTR TEXTSTR is a lot less typing in a large program than:
and also avoids the inevitable typo, such as:
I also have macros like ADD and SUB (subtract), where ADD 2,3 is equivalent to 2+3, etc.

You mean beauties like BTFSC/BTFSS?

I must admit I quite like programming PIC16s because of the minimality, but yes some things are most definitely backwards.

One thing I prefer is mnemonics that tell you whether interrupts are enabled or disabled, like ENI and DSI, rather than CLI and SEI, since on some processors a 1 means enable interrupts and on other processors a 1 means disable interrupts. Macros are great for this sort of thing, of course, and that way you don't have to remember which way it is. Sort of like the often-recommended SHORTA/LONGA/SHORTX/LONGX (or A8/A16/X8/X16 or whatever) macros for REP/SEP #$20 and REP/SEP #$10.

I recently updated my posting of Kowalski macros for the 65C816 with new ones. It should be understood that the 65C816 macros allow one to assemble programs for that MPU but not actually run them within the simulator. Also, note that WDC-specific 65C02 instructions, e.g., WAI or STP, will not be understood by the simulator as well.

EDIT: The above-referenced macros are obsolete, as the Kowalski editor/assembler/simulator now understands the 65C816 assembly language, as well as the enhancements that are specific to the WDC 65C02.