hey guys, at one point in time I decided to start learning Masm, but later lost interest. now i want to get back into it, and im not sure if i should buy a certain book or read tutorials off the net?
think twice before you do something.
if i were you, i wouldn't waste my money on book. finding a good
book is hard... but finding a good tutorial is also hard.
you see, books are written by people who are comfortable with a-
ssembly, and they tend to explain stuff at their level of think-
ing. are you comfortable with assembly yet? if not, then check -
the net and read tutorial until you are. only buy book if you're
comfortable. you wouldn't want to be the one who go to the book
store and then look at the code (in the book) and say, cool. i -
think this book is best. and month later, you don't find it use-
full. if you have assembly knowledge, then it's easy to determi-
ne whether the book you're holding is good for you or not. othe-
rwise, it's difficult...
everybook start their preface or introduction by saying:
"This book is different than any other, in that blah blah blah"
ya, i have book that say that too, but it's crap. but hey, know-
ledge is good. if you think reading one little line help, then -
go for it.
check out: http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/index.html
and play around with that package(that's one of the best book
on 16bit programming in assembly and it's free). once you're
capable with that, then go for 32bit programming (iczelion site)
if that's what you're heading or just continue reading the whole
package if 16bit is your choice. and then, YOU can decide wheth-
er you want to buy books or not.
I happen to love buying books, and have learned plenty by going that route.
However, I have zero choices to recommend for learning asm. Windows, yes, nothing beats Petzold's classic "Programming Windows." But that is written in C.
Assembly is a weird beast, people just seem to know it. I know I taught it to myself with just a list of instructions and a register map. This was long ago for the Z80 processor, a Pentium would probably not give its secrets so easily.
Various web postings are probably the best. The older version of Art of Assembly may be best, but even that has much 16 bit stuff (32 bit is much much simpler).
So, the short answer is... beats me.
Check out university web sites! They often have a course directory with PDF's of class lectures taking you through from the beginning.
The one i can think of is 16 bit asm (not 32 that hutch's masm package is based), but it will help you understand PURPOSE of registers etc. etc.
Here is one: Carleton Univertity ~ Intro to Assembly
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