[H-GEN] X86 Assembler Programming

[Greg Black]

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On 2003-11-10, irwa82 at froggy.com.au wrote:

> I have decided that it would be interesting to look into assembler
> programming. From what I have discovered nasm seems to be the program I
> should be using.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone knows of any good nasm specific or assembler in
> general tutorials aimed at people that have never touched assembler and
> have no clue.

If this is an accurate description of yourself, then I'd
strongly suggest starting with the assembly language for an
easier CPU -- the Z80 would be my suggestion, but anything from
that era without pipelines, caches, and all that modern stuff
would be nice.  The bookshops have books -- read a few pages of
them and see how you go.

And be aware that writing assembler, even for people who love
it, is slow and tedious work.  It has few of the joys of
programming in slightly higher level languages such as C and
many frustrations all of its own.  But it will teach you stuff
that will make anything else you do with software seem both easy
to do and much easier to understand.

I think everyone should learn assembler; and I don't think
anyone should use it (unless they really are writing those few
lines of code that must be done in assembler).

Cheers, Greg

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