21–30 of 56 posts
Does it make sense to learn x86 assembly now, or is x64 assembly simpler? All the machines I use are x64 and the binaries I generate are 64-bit. (I realize it's a superset, but I suppose I want to learn the smallest useful subset, since it's a big topic...)
Hah, just today I started to read "Haskell programming from first principles"[1] which also targets non-programmers but builds on lambda calculus instead of assembly. Would anyone actually recommend to a beginner to start learn assembly first? [1] http://haskellbook.com/
This is another nice book about x86 assembly: http://www.drpaulcarter.com/pcasm/
Dead nameservers are relatively rare among sites that get posted to HN, since many are high traffic and use CDNs (that rely on DNS kludges). But it is still a regular occurrence. No one ever talks about it. But it's one of the DNS kludges that's continually slowing things down behind the scenes.
There is that term "link rot" for URL's that do not work anymore. And "bit rot" for source code. I propose a new one: "NS rot".
Top of HN with 4 upvotes and no comments?
Books generally collect lots of upvotes, but few comments, since you generally have to read the book first before commenting. Controversial news articles, whose entire content can be summed up in the headline, collect both upvotes and comments. The ranking algorithm punishes submissions with many comments, to push those submissions off the front page.
In CS you're usually started off with something like C, Java, or Python. But those languages are so HUGE (in comparison) that it can be really overwhelming. Meanwhile, with assembly, you have far fewer items in your toolbox and you have no abstractions between what you write and what's being executed.
After googling, I found emu8086 [0], which I think is what I used to debug the tiny apps I was writing. It was great! You could step back and forward in time, and you could inspect every detail.
Does it make sense to learn x86 assembly now, or is x64 assembly simpler? All the machines I use are x64 and the binaries I generate are 64-bit. (I realize it's a superset, but I suppose I want to learn the smallest useful subset, since it's a big topic...)
(1) Start off by making changes to a program that someone/some book gave us as a basis and blindly stumble through some changes and compiler/interpreter/runtime errors.
(2) Take a step back, absorb what we've learned from the errors.
(3) Read more about the principles of the programming language/OS/API/operating environment.
(4) Internalize concepts behind the language/OS/API/operating environment.
(5) Goto (1).
It's only after many iterations through this process that I can now see similarities among different processors (CPU/DSP/GPU/etc), operating systems, APIs, programming languages. So many classes of problems can be solved effectively without ever understanding these details, so it makes sense for those new programmers not to learn the details at first. IMO, this is at least an intermediate-level text.
Learning assembly was probably the biggest thing that made computers click in my head. Since then, I've always thought that learning assembly as your first programming language would be a great place to start. Of course, I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone. In CS you're usually started off with something like C, Java, or Python. But those languages are so HUGE (in comparison) that it can be really overwhelming. M…
Learning assembly was probably the biggest thing that made computers click in my head. Since then, I've always thought that learning assembly as your first programming language would be a great place to start. Of course, I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone. In CS you're usually started off with something like C, Java, or Python. But those languages are so HUGE (in comparison) that it can be really overwhelming. M…
Then I read a book that explained how assembly works and how a compiler would implement C's features with assembly. It all clicked since then. Too bad I've forgotten the name of the book.