Atari, Inc. published two assemblers. The Atari Assembler Editor cartridge is a friendlier, integrated development environment on using line numbers for editing source code similar to Atari BASIC. The professionally targeted Atari Macro Assembler shipped at a higher price on a copy protected disk without editor or debugger. Third-party assemblers include SynAssembler from Synapse Software and MAE from Eastern House. Optimized Systems Software published an enhanced disk-based assembler mimicking the structure of Atari's Assembler Editor as EASMD. It followed that with MAC/65. MAC/65 tokenizes lines of code as they are entered and has much faster assembly times than Atari's products. Dunion's Debugging Tool by Jim Dunion is a machine language debugger originally sold through the Atari Program Exchange. A reduced version is included in the cartridge version of MAC/65. Atari magazine ANALOG Computing published the machine language monitor H:BUG as a type-in listing. followed by BBK Monitor.
BASIC
Atari shipped Atari BASIC with all their machines either as a cartridge or in ROM. It also sold Atari Microsoft BASIC on disk. Optimized Systems Software created a series of enhanced BASICs: BASIC A+, BASIC XL, BASIC XE. BASIC compilers were also available, from 1982's ABC to two releases from 1985: Advan BASIC and Turbo BASIC XL.
Pascal
Atari's own Atari Pascal requires two disk drives and was relegated to the Atari Program Exchange instead of the official product line. Later options were Draper Pascal and Kyan Pascal.
Forth
Atari 8-bit Forths include fig-Forth, Extended fig-Forth, ES-Forth, QS Forth, and ValFORTH.
Other
is an ALGOL 68-like procedural programming language that shipped on cartridge with an integrated compiler and full-screen text editor. The language is designed for quick compile times and to generate efficient 6502 machine code. Deep Blue C is a port of Ron Cain's Small-C compiler. It was sold through the Atari Program Exchange. Atari, Inc. published versions of Atari Logo and Atari PILOT on cartridge. Other Atari 8-bit family languages include Extended WSFN and Inter-LISP/65.
Because of graphics superior to that of the Apple II and Atari's home-oriented marketing, the Atari 8-bit computers gained a good reputation for games. BYTE in 1981 stated that "for sound and video graphics are hard to beat". Jerry Pournelle wrote in the magazine in 1982, when trying to decide what computer to buy his sons, that "if you're only interested in games, that's the machine to get. It's not all that expensive, either". A 1984 compendium of reviews used 198 pages for games compared to 167 for all others. It noted the existence of a distinct "graphics look" to native Atari software: "Multiple graphics modes, four directional fine scrolling, colorful modified character-set backgrounds, and, of course, player missile graphics." Star Raiders was Atari's killer app, akin to VisiCalc for the Apple II in its ability to persuade customers to buy the computer. Antic in 1986 stated that "it was the first program that showed all of the Atari computer's audio and visual capabilities. It was just a game, yes, but it revolutionized the idea of what a personal computer could be made to do."
