Imagesource: https://github.com/MemberA2600/

The ATARI 2600, VCS and 5200 consoles were, are and remain icons of computer and gaming history and may have influenced one or the other as a decisive motivation in their choice of career.

The 6502 as it’s base CPU was also to be found in a number of other machines of the time. Programming in Assembly was as tedious for the ATARI consoles as for all others. Since emulators were not available until later, cross compilers for high level languages were still missing and debugging could often only be done by trial and error, software development for the 2600 in the 80s can at least be classified as … this-special-pain-from-behind-down-there-somewhere™.

The situation got better over the years, but it's interesting, that even long after the official demise of the actual console, development tools are still being built alongside new and fresh software.

Astonishing example: Fortari.

The project started by Fehér János Zoltán wants to be seen as a complete development environment for the 2600, which can be used to develop software in Fortran. Fortan … ok, no C, but also no assembly on the other hand!

The Windows software is a complete IDE and supports only versions with 32k ROM and SARA superchip addon. But for whom the project seems relevant, this should not be a real hurdle.

A beautiful example of real ATARI love! ♥️