[kjs3]

That's fair, although I had a pretty early AIM-65 (roughly contemporary to the KIM-1) that had FORTH in ROM. So yes, there was a time in the 6502 history where ASM was pretty much the only option, but lots of other options came along quickly.

P.S. - The Altair had a floppy option pretty much from introduction ('76 or '77, at least) as well as a cassette tape setup, so while you often bootstrapped with the front panel (unless you added a bootstrap ROM someplace; many did), you didn't have to load all your software that way. I had friends who even had paper tape readers on their Altairs, which were pretty cool.