[H-GEN] X86 Assembler Programming

Nick Kwiatkowski nickolas at au1.ibm.com
Mon Nov 10 07:34:02 EST 2003


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On 2003-11-10, Greg Black wrote:
> 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.
>

Have a look at: http://linuxassembly.org/

> 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.
>

One suggestion would be to use the in-line functions of C (gcc), so that
you can let gcc/gas do most of the work for you while you are still
learning.

> 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).
>
Fully agree with that statement, one of the many good castor oils[1] for
programmers.

[1] Like performing System Testing and documentation, you know it must be
good for them by how much they complain about it[2].
[2] Including myself :)

Nickolas Kwiatkowski
IT Architect
AMS Solutions Enablement (ASE)
Application Management Services
IBM Global Services
phone:  07 3887 6041,  mobile:  0412 121 276,  email:  nickolas at au1.ibm.com
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein


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