Outstanding text for class or self-learning!

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	• The Art of Assembly Language Randall Hyde No Starch Press, 2003 - 928 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Outstanding text for class or self-learning!

This book is 900+ pages of outstanding material on what is really an art - assembly language programming. The author, a university professor, has done what so many other authors have failed to do: take a complicated subject and break it down into easy-to-digest pieces. More importantly, it's written in clear, understandable language. Although not for the faint hearted - you really have to want to learn assembly language programming - the serious student should have no problems. What's really neat (IMHO) is that the author's proven system - called High Level Assembler (HLA) - is used throughout the book. HLA, although slightly different from 'regular' assembler, is easy to learn and very, very logical. The CD-ROM included with this book contains the HLA, the HLA library of routines, all of the source code in the book and over 50,000 lines of sample code. Again, if you want to learn assembly language, this is "the" book you should have in your library!!!

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A Note From the Author

Well, after four years of reading these reviews, I thought I'd put in my two cents.

One recurring theme you see in all of these reviews is the following: if someone already knows assembly language, they tend to dislike the use of HLA as the teaching vehicle for learning assembly language. On the other hand, if they're a newcomer to assembly language, they tend to like the approach that Art of Assembly uses. Quite frankly, I wrote "Art of Assembly Language" (AoA) for this latter category, not for those who already know assembly language, so I am rather gratified by the response from those who are actually using AoA to learn assembly language.

When someone sets down to write a book on x86 assembly language, one of the first decisions they have to make is "which assembly language syntax do I use?" The x86 is blessed/cursed with literally *dozens* of different assembly language syntaxes. No matter *what* assembly language syntax I chose, there would have been someone complaining about it. If I'd gone with GNU's as (gas), there would have been complaints about the syntax. Had I gone with FASM, the NASM crowd would have been put off.

Probably the "safe" choice would have been to go with MASM (which the earlier, 16-bit version of the book, used). No doubt, many of the complaints about how I used HLA instead of a different assembly language syntax would have gone away had I done this. The funny part is that MASM is *also* a high-level assembler, having almost all the same high-level control constructs found in HLA. The same is true, by the way, for Borland's Turbo Assembler (TASM). From a language feature point of view, there really isn't much difference between the high-level facilities of MASM, TASM, and HLA. Maybe it's just the name that freaks people out.

Some reviewers have commented that this is the wrong way to teach assembly language. Well, having taught assembly language at the University level for over 10 years, I must respectfully disagree. I've used HLA (before AoA was available) and the students did *far* better in the course. They got much farther along because they were able to apply their HLL programming knowledge to problems early in the course. By the time the course covered the low-level machine instructions, they were doing quite well. The courses I taught with HLA worked *much* better than the comparable courses I taught with MASM. The bottom line is that this teachnique technique has been classroom and laboratory tested. Interested individuals might want to check out my white paper on this subject:

I will make the following observation about AoA: if you already know assembly language, you're probably not going to like the presentation because it's completely different from the way *you* learned assembly and most people seem to think that the only way to learn something is the same way they learned it. On the other hand, if you don't know assembly language and you want to learn it, pay particular attention to those reviews from the people who used AoA to learn assembly language.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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