Re: fledgling assembler programmer

On Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 2:40:22 PM UTC-7, Alan Beck wrote:


> I have started to learn Assembler out of an old book.


(Hopefully enough related to compilers.)


Not so long after I started learning OS/360 Fortran and PL/I, I found
the compiler option for printing out the generated code in sort-of
assembly language. (Not actually assembleable, though.)


About that time, I also had source listings on microfilm of
the OS/360 Fortran library, and some other Fortran callable
assembly programs. And also, the IBM S/370 Principles
of Operation.


With those, and no actual book meant to teach assembly
programming, I figured it out, and started writing my own
programs, though mostly callable from Fortran or PL/I.


Compilers today don't write out the generated code in the same way,
and there aren't so many libraries around to read. And, personally,
8086 is my least favorite to write assembly code in.


Learning C, and thinking about pointers and addresses, is a good start
toward assembly programming.


In any case, I don't think I have any idea how others learn
programming for any language, and especially not for assembly
programming. I used to read IBM reference manuals, cover to cover.
That was mostly high school years. After that, I figured out how to
use them as reference manuals.


Most of my 80x86 assembly programming in the last
20 years is (re)writing this one program:


rdtsc: rdtsc
      ret


When called from C, and returning a 64 bit integer, it return the Time
Stamp Counter. (Works for 32 bit code, returning in EDX:EAX. 64 bit is
different.)


C programming works so well, that there are only a few
things you can't do in C, and so need assembly programs.

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