16 Mar
2006
16 Mar
'06
4:33 p.m.
--- Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
Chris M wrote:
YO!! I wrote the review:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0134481437/ref=sr_11_1/103-8150401-5296666…
Just so happens that I'm the only one that reviewed
the first edition ;). Don't know, had heard that later
editions were not as good. Everything depends on the
individual I guess. Some things work better for some,
not so better for others. Read my review. I'm a self
learner, and that book did it, when I decided to dig
my heals in. Had my little tape recorder and dictated
notes to myself...transcribed them to paper later (it
works!).
Just a suggestion...
The only text on assembly language (as far as
I'm
concerned) - IBM PC Assembly Language and
Programming,
Peter Abel, 1st Edition
Amazon reviews disagree; who is right? Two of my favorite 8088 assembler books were one
that I have misplaced
and can't remember the name of, but it began by
dumping you directly
into DEBUG and you wrote your first assembler
programs in it (even
saving your work to disk and loading it back to make
edits). Writing
functional programs directly in debug, no source
code but the binary
opcodes themselves, made a few bulbs turn on in my
head.
Yup, he did that in the book. Debug rocks! And as a
matter of fact, if you've done nothing else but BASIC,
learning the assembler mechanics itself is a little
weird (again praise for Abel's handling of it). All
that formatting stuph annoyed me origanally as I
recall.
The second was Abrash's Zen of Assembler. He
tends
to beat a point into
the ground, redundantly and repeatedly, but overall
it is fascinating
reading and most definitely has helped my speed
optimization skills.
Right, optimization is what he strives to teach in
his books. Also has Zen of Graphics Programming and
the Graphics Programming Black Book (amongst others I
presume). He used to write for PC Tech Journal also.
Note, although Zen of Assembly Language has come down
in price (used to be like $75, now about $45), it
comes on the cd that's included with Graphics Program
Black Book, and that's half the price.
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