Did he really write the BASIC before he wrote the monitor program which sits at the top of the address space? The monitor was documented as part of the systems manual of the Apple ][ and contained a small disassembler which helped a lot when coding some instructions or jumps wrong. I learned a lot from that code.
It's not entirely clear, but not much point in writing a monitor for a computer you haven't even designed yet.
I assume he wrote BASIC first to make sure he knew the computer he was building would be capable of running BASIC. And also not too capable, since the goal was a cheap computer capable of running BASIC.
But, he did write a simple monitor (and burn it into PROM) before actually running BASIC. Just 256 bytes: No disassembler, just the ability to read/modify and execute hex bytes. Before Woz created the tape interface, you had to type BAISC into the monitor as hex every time you powered up the computer.
I assume he wrote BASIC first to make sure he knew the computer he was building would be capable of running BASIC. And also not too capable, since the goal was a cheap computer capable of running BASIC.
But, he did write a simple monitor (and burn it into PROM) before actually running BASIC. Just 256 bytes: No disassembler, just the ability to read/modify and execute hex bytes. Before Woz created the tape interface, you had to type BAISC into the monitor as hex every time you powered up the computer.