ASM Community

Well, I'm not entirely sure that this thread belongs in the Crusades forum section, but this appears (to me) to be the forum section for "Other programming languages besides asm" so I thought it might fit. Sorry if it's misplaced.

Anyhow, IMO, you should know the following languages and my resoning is given for each. In fact, I don't see any reason to bother learning any other languages other than these, as you can do everything you want with just these.

C --Great general purpose language which is fairly portable across platforms (especially if you only make console
applications). If you use the right APIs with it, you can make some truly portable GUI code across platforms,
too. Also allows inline assembly, which is a plus.
Java --You're going to want to learn either this or the java machine language so that you can make Java applets.
JavaScript/JScript --You're going to want to learn these so you can make higher interactive web pages
CGI ---Doesn't matter, as long as you learn one CGI language---could be Perl, PHP, Python, whatever. Only need
one
Shockwave Lingo --If you want to make shockwave web programs. Either that or learn the .swf file format.
Assembly languages ---One for each platform you wish to program on.

Anything else that some other language can do can easily be implemented in any of those languages (at least I think it can).

Now the question goes out to everyone else. --What languages should you learn, and why?

*edit* just thought I'd add HTML in here as well, but I don't really consider that a programming language, but it is something you should just know. I think the reasons are obvious;)

Here's my list :)

c/c++ : Two of the most widely used languages. So its useful to learn one or both of them. You need to understand C to understand the window api documentation and the example code and a lot of the code available on the net is in C or C++. If I want to buy a book on game programming or compiler design the language the book uses will probably be c or c++.

Some RAD language ( Delphi or vb or something) : Sometimes you want to get something done quickly and don't want to write millions of lines of code to do it.

asm: Everthing else :)

I would suggest English, French, German and Spanish. Italian is good too if you want to pick up chicks like the guy in "A Fish Called Wanda". Besides those - C++ ASM and HTML are the heavy hitters. ASM not so much for you're ability to get a job because you know it but because it gives you a low level understanding of the machine that is hard to get in the other languages.

Yeah, he speaks Russian too but JLC gets of on the Italian. That was a great movie, the stupid "brother" was about the funniest character I have ever seen :grin: "Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people !" :grin:

Hmmm, interesting spin on things, Donkey.:D Personally, I think it would be really great to know quite a few foreign languages, most useful being Spanish, German, French, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, and Greek, in no particular order.

BTW, Randall, thanks for your list and input on this. You had a few languages in there which I had not heard of before (SETL, Icon, FORTH, Dynamo, and RPG, to be exact).

I used to try to learn all of the languages I could, but now I think it best if I just try to concentrate on C and x86 assembly language (for now) and differences in compilers and try to become confident creating Windows programs using those.

Also, thank you for your Art of Assembly language programming tutorials for DOS. My university didn't have an assembly language programming class, so I felt extremely gypped and cheated by that (and wished I had gone to this certain other university I had been accepted into, as it was more well-known for its technological courses), but, being the high school student (soon to be in college) that I was at the time, and, having no programming experience (at that time) other than TI82 and TI86 calculator programming, I thought this university would be easier, but it turned out to be worse, and, turns out I even switched majors here because I simply loathe certain professors in the CS department here. One of them did something which I would consider "the last straw", and so I switched. To save this university embarrassment or whatever, and to make a long story short, I will not say which it is or who the particular professors are/were, but I will say that I am and was very grateful for your Art of Assembly language programming tutorials for DOS, because that was the first place I turned to begin learning assembly language programming, and I did indeed learn it using those tutorials.:) (although I later invested in a couple of textbooks to read as well, concerning x86 DOS programming.)

I might have said too much there, but I guess all I'm trying to say is that I really appreciated your AoA pages.;) However, I think I will pass on HLA, no offense. I'd rather stick with a more low-level assembler for assembly language, and use C for any high level language stuff, and then link the object files together, or else stick to C with inline assembly.;)

Not to try and force you to use HLA against your wishes, but you suffer from a common misconception - that you can't write low-level assembly with HLA. This isn't true. There is very little 32-bit flat model code you could write with FASM, MASM, etc., that cannot also be written with HLA. Indeed, MASM and TASM are capable of most of the high-level stuff that you can do with HLA, so unless you're making the same statement about MASM and TASM, then you really misunderstand what HLA is all about.

The advantage of HLA over other assemblers is not so much the high-level facilities. The advantage of HLA is that it has a vastly more powerful macro subsystem and HLA has the HLA Standard Library. The macros let you (or the author of a library package) extend the language, the Standard Library routines spare you the bother of writing all your own I/O routines (a process that seems to be repeated *every* time an individual decides to learn assembly language, what a waste).

AoA, 32-bit edition, teaches assembly language from a high-level perspective, which is perfect for its target audience (students who've learned at least one high level programming language). But by the time you get to chapter seven (in the published edition, anyway), you're doing low-level programming. Beyond that point, using high-level constructs is simply a matter of taste.

The bottom line is that HLA is not at all comparable to C, with or without in-line assembly. For example, C fully supports arithmetic expressions (HLA does not). C is a machine independent language (HLA is not). C's data types are not well-defined (e.g., there is no such thing as a byte, word, or dword in C). C doesn't support all the things you can normally do in assembly language (like messing with the stack in a coherent fashion), whereas HLA does.

Ultimately, the choice of which assembler you want to learn with is yours. What HLA/AoA offers is an easier way to learn *assembly* language for those who already know a high level language like C. HLA, MASM, and TASM do not force you to use high-level or low-level instructions - they give you the option of using them when, where, and if appropriate. During the learning process, for example, it's appropriate to use these; in certain critical code sequences, it's inappropriate. Either way, you've got the choice -- something a traditional assembler doesn't give you.

Cheers,
Randy Hyde

Pertaining to the languages. I'm working on a presentation for school (opengl demo my teacher wanted me to throw together) and i was at first doing it in asm(using masm), but now after reading all of this and esp. Mr. Hydes statements, I think im gonna just use C for it(or some other high level construct), as it will be most efficient. Hopefully...

GuyonAsm.

ShortCoder,

i would tend to see languages as core and peripheral. For you core languages, I refer to languages like asm, basic, C and Pascal as the ones that will be the most use to you over the longer haul. All 4 have code going back many years so they do not die out easily.

Others have come and gone as the circumstances that generated them have changed but where you have very large user bases of a particular language, newer versions tend to be written to satisfy that user base.

ASM is useful because of its capacity, basic because its probably the largest user base in the world, C is effectively portable if you avoid platform specific extensions and Pascal is one of the oldest high level languages still afloat.

There will be times when you use a different style of language for a special purpose, VB, server side scripting and many others but they tend to come and go so if you have a good base in one or more of the core languages, you will outlast the short term languages.

Regards,
http://www.asmcommunity.net/board/cryptmail.php?tauntspiders=in.your.face@nomail.for.you&id=2f46ed9f24413347f14439b64bdc03fd

C++ to build large systems with good performance.
Other languages for tasks where they make life easier without giving unacceptable performance,

You can add Sphinx C-- to the list,it's a combination of asm and C.