Compute!'s Gazette had this down to a science. When I first started, they were offering simple BASIC type-ins, and I'm pretty sure that I did some of those without benefit of persistent storage.
But then they began trumpeting a revolution in type-ins: just enter this simple little BASIC editor, then type in a whole mind-numbing mess of meaningless numbers. The editor checksummed every line, et voila! A working and extremely performant game/app entirely in machine code!
The checksum was amazing! When my siblings and I made a mistake, we would go through the entire code and check each entry. Took too long and we gave up!
But then they began trumpeting a revolution in type-ins: just enter this simple little BASIC editor, then type in a whole mind-numbing mess of meaningless numbers. The editor checksummed every line, et voila! A working and extremely performant game/app entirely in machine code!