Re: Why I stop attacking HLA


<randyhyde@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1125699259.599439.250860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

anonymous wrote:

||Betov did in fact provide a decent alternative to Webster and HLA.

|I'm afraid the market does not agree with you. But I'm glad you're
|happy with what he provides.
And who are you? The market?
sorry, couldn't help it, :-) , maybe you're right... I can only speak for
the one person that I represent in the global concept "The market". I know,
seeing as you work teaching this stuff on a dayly basis to students, you
would know how your students do or do not seem to benefit from various
teaching techniches.


|| He does not provide coverage of all the same topics covered,
|You just said it's an alternative. Now you're saying it's not.
You shouldn't split up my sentences, because I often will, merely to the
fact of English being my second language, only provide the full information
required to understand my "writings" in as small packets as sentences,
sometimes you might even need to read a full paragraph to understand a
point. I apologize for this, but as said English is my second language, I
cannot help it.


|| but he has
|| given beginners and others an alternative approach to assembly.
|"Alternative" is indeed a good word for it :-).
I wasn't going to comment on this, so I'll leave it with a mere general
statement:
Alternative is _good_ not bad!
Alternative approaches in general are assets, because they allow you to see
a case from more than one perspective.

|| RosAsm is a
|| great tool indeed,
|| the IDE is rather good,
|Most people who've gotten used to the CUA tend to disagree, as his
|editing facilities do *not* follow standard Windows conventions. E.g.,
|select a large number of lines in a source file and press the DEL key.
|And listen to Rene gripe about scroll bars (they're not even up by
|default!). Sure, you can get used to all of this, but why should you?
|Microsoft spent a lot of money coming up with good user interface
|guidelines and promoting them for consistency across Windows' apps.
RosAsm _supports_ windows interface guidelines, all the functions you are
requesting are already available from the "Bad habits" pane or other panes
in the RosAsm settings dialog.

|| with a nearly endless list of great easy to use "plugins". The only big
|| minus' is its inability to link to external (static) libraries / existing
|| object files.
|| Of course also it has two disadvantages over HLA, the missing
|| stdlib (that would however be an autofix if it became able to link to
|| external libraries) and the incompatibility to linux.
|Without decent macro facilities and a great compile-time language,
|RosAsm will never compete with the likes of HLA, MASM, and so on. You
|bring up the point of the HLA Standard Library. You do realize that
|much of the HLA Standard Library's benefits lie not only in the code
|that was written, but in the macros that provide the interface to the
|code, right? RosAsm can't even come close to doing something like the
|HLA Stdlib "stdout.put" macro, regardless of what Rene claims.
First of all macros should not have a say, we are (or at least I am/was)
here to learn/discuss assembly, not some HLL based on macros. If one wanted
to learn/discuss some HLL they would probably go with C or something.
Second, an alternative approach doesn't need to be like an already existing
approach, that would strip the "alternativeness" from it, wouldn't you
agree?


|| About tutorials, Betov's own are not (or at least weren't for me) the
best
|| (sorry Betov), but that doesn't matter, because the Bottom_Up_Assembly
file
|| will teach you how to use RosAsm and it is great reference when
|| learning/programming and Betov provides from his webspace download links
to
|| ported versions of many popular tutorials along with sources to many
|| programs.
|I only looked at one of the tutorials once, who knows, maybe they've
|changed and maybe the others are different. But the one that I looked
|at was of the variety "type this text in, select this menu item, look
|at the output, ooooh, aaaah..." It basically taught nothing. It was a
|demo, not a tutorial. Perhaps the others are different, I don't know.
|But it's clear that the "tutorials" that Rene was bragging about last
|year existed to fill in a bullet on a feature matrix and served little
|other purpose.
On Betov's homepage there are download links to Iczelion's tuts and TD's
tuts both ported to RosAsm

Also the idea behind the Betov's own tutorials is a good one, wouldn't you
agree? - interactive tutorials that make it easy to test and experiment with
things is a good thing. Most books encourage tests and experiments. Yes,
Betov's tutorials advance to quickly, but the idea, the concept, is good.

|As for the B_U_ASM file: subtract the obvious political BS that doesn't
|belong in a reference manual and it makes a *fine* reference manual for
|the assembler. Lot's of little missing things, as can be expected for a
|document like that, but better than typical stuff (e.g., the FASM
|reference). But keep in mind that a *reference* manual is for
|*reference*, it is not the best tool for *learning* with. In
|particular, it is a poor tool for learning how to program from. And
|this has nothing to do with the fact that it's a RosAsm manual, this is
|true for *all* reference manuals. The HLA Reference Manual is not a
|good tool for learning programming from, for example. People who
|already know how to program in assembly can pick up a reference manual
|and learn how to apply their knowledge to a new product (like RosAsm or
|HLA), but they cannot efficiently learn how to program from a reference
|manual.
The reference manual is not only reference, it is also a documentation of
the RosAsm features. This documentation is good for learning the RosAsm
syntax and method. (notice the word learning) As you say, however, the
B&U_Asm reference would not teach you assembly, but Iczelion and TD (look
above) might do that, as they would have done for any other assembler - no
surprise ;-)



|| RosAsm has been me a great help in my learning of assembly.

|That's great for you. Just keep in mind that you are in the minority.
|I'm glad that RosAsm has helped you learn assembly, that's what it's
|all about. But I stick by my original assertion that Rene's site
|doesn't provide anything that can compete with Webster. If he did,
|there would be a lot more people like you, who've learned assembly
|language programming from his web site (and I'd also point out that
|although Webster certainly favors HLA, it is *not* the only assembly
|language presented and taught on Webster).
I did not learn Assembly solely to the fact of Betov's website and tools,
however I did not learn assembly from Webster and tools either, no doubt all
are good tools for learning, but alone they for me did not stand a chance. I
had great difficulties accepting the macros in HLA when I was learning,
therefore your AoA_old was a great help to me since it discusses important
concepts. I shall not judge who of you two (or of any two for that matter)
is the better innovator, because frankly it doesn't matter who is the
better, when (at least for me) none of your approaches alone took me all the
way to understanding. We are strong _together_ not apart ;-)

The tutorial that filled "the holes in my understanding" after reading
several hundred different texts about assembly/win32asm was infact the
tutorial that tought me z80 assembly for my calculator. That tutorial,
"83Plus Assembly in 28 Days", was the tutorial that glued all the other
tutorials together, connected them with a line from dot to dot. The
magnificent about this tutorial is that it is brief yet thorough, you can
read it in a week, and by the end of that week you have an understanding of
all the necessary concepts, concepts reusable in x86 asm. :-)


|| and Betov this is for you: Words such as ass-hole, troll and other ugly
|| nicknames will, when the apropriate smileys are not attached,
|Even when the smileys are attached, the use of vulagarity always
|reflects negatively on the poster. Most people interpret it as a sign
|of a lack of intelligence or an admission of defeat in an argument.
|| make you less
|| respected and Randy more respected (as long as he doesn't use them toward
|| others himself)
|If there was no other reason to respect me, your statement would be
|absolutely correct. People tend to give their respect to the person who
|is a bit more civil and articulate in debates like those that
|constantly rage around here.
my comment: "(as long as he doesn't use them toward others himself)"
(replace he with "the person in question" and himself with "himself/herslef"
to make it general as it is supposed to be) is always correct, no matter if
there are other reasons to respect the person in question. They might still
respect those reasons, say the persons work, writings, but the person
himself/herself they would not respect until he/she, as you put it, would
return to the civilized state.

|Then again, Rene constantly tells us that he doesn't care about his
|reputation and his only goal in life is to damage mine, no matter what
|the cost to him. What he doesn't seem to realize is that in order to
|damage my reputation, he needs to first have the respect of the people
|reading his stuff. And even if he briefly develops that respect (for
|one reason or another), it quickly gets shot down the next time he goes
|into one of his tirades.
I will not discuss Betov with you. ;-) For reference: "and Betov this is for
you" in my original post.

|There is *good* news, however. For the past month or so, Rene's
|signal-to-noise ratio has actually risen above zero. He is actually
|participating in a few discussions that don't involve bashing me or HLA
|(or other people or products). Maybe watching Hutch go into
|self-destructive mode has given Rene pause for thought. Maybe someone
|has pointed out to him that this is how everyone views *him* around
|here.

|| It is the socalled "reverse psychology" phenomena in action.
|Not really. Reverse psychology is when you do something you expect
|someone else to reject, so you can force them into a behavior you want
|by making them think you want them to do exactly the opposite.
Never mind you understand what I mean. ;-)

|There is no question that Rene's thinking is a little "backwards" in
|many respects. For example, he thinks it's inethical to promote his own
|products directly, but feels it's fine to trash other products (as an
|indirect way of promoting his products). He seems to think that it's
|fine to use a description of himself when talking about other people
|(e.g., calling people "liars" when, in fact, he's lying his tail off in
|that very post.
Let him think for himself ;-) Refer to what he writes, not to what he
thinks.

Wow that was a long one.

:-D

:-D

smiling is great!
greetz,
Jakob Wrigley


.

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