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I "solved" that by using two assembling passes. The first had dummy jump/call addresses in order to determine the code offsets of labels. Then I would resolve the relative offsets, replace the target labels with offset deltas and reassemble.

I used that trick to speed up my QBasic programs with graphics, string and list handling, etc. It was one of the first rewarding times in my programming "career" and it actually made me feel proud of myself.

Yeah-- I did the same thing. It just sucks when you've forgotten s prefix or a push/pop early in the code and you have to retarget all the subsequent addresses. It really makes you appreciate a real assembler.

If you write basic blocks only with a certain alignment there's much less hand patching imposed for small changes

I remember reading about people doing that on the Apple II with the Woz mini assembler. I always had an assembler on the 6502 so I never did it myself. Makes sense though. Never thought to do it on x86 but it's a good idea.

After a while, you get really good at hex arithmetic and memorising x86 instruction lengths.