Re: Why I stop attacking HLA


anonymous wrote:
> <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?

Well, I *am* the guy whose web site just turned 6,000,000 hits. I *do*
get quite a few emails from people who've visited the site and have
bought my books. And I *do* visit quite a few other assembly language
sites on a regular basis.

Oh, and I've been doing assembly language programming since about 1976.
I may not *be* the market, but I *do* have a bit of experience in these
matters and I do have a good idea of what the market is after. And
RosAsm just isn't it. But that would be obvious to me even if I didn't
have this experience. RosAsm just isn't be accepted by too many people.
If it really were something the "market" wanted, you'd think it would
be a little more popular after seven years of development.


> 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.

Actually, no. I do not teach this stuff on a daily basis. I *did* teach
from 1989 to 2000 and maybe someday I will do that again. But just to
keep a myth from propagating, I do *not* currently teach assembly
language in any formal capacity.


>
>
> || 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.

Okay. Fair enough.

>
>
> || 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!

No, "alternative" means different. Whether it is good or bad is a
different (and independent) issue.


> Alternative approaches in general are assets, because they allow you to see
> a case from more than one perspective.

Or they further obscure what you're already having trouble
understanding.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with your sentiment. More choices *are*
better. But it doesn't mean that every alternative is going to be
valuable for everyone. RosAsm as an alternative is very valuable for
you, apparently. That's great. It makes RosAsm a "good" alternative, at
least in your case, and that's what counts, right?

>
> || 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.

They should be the standard mode. And advanced people should be able to
turn them off if they don't like them. That's what the CUA is all
about.

> |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?

When I first started teaching assembly, I would have agreed
wholeheartedly with your statement (indeed, I often bemoaned the fact
that instructors were relying too much on macros in the assembly
classes I saw as an undergraduate and graduate student). However, once
I started teaching the assembly courses and discovered the value of
getting students up and programming as rapidly as possible in a 10-week
course, I began to "see the light" and understood why library modules
and macros are so useful.

You are making the common mistake of thinking that people in an
assembly course are taught how to use IF statements and WHILE
statements in an assembly language class and they never progress beyond
that point. This is false on two points.

First off all, students don't "learn" IFs and WHILEs, they already know
them coming in the course (as a HLL programming course or two is almost
always a prerequisite for an assembly course).

The second incorrect assumption here is that they never learn the
"right way" to code these statements. By providing IF/WHILE/etc
"macros" you allow the students to begin doing useful things on day
one, mastering other concepts in assembly language (such as how to do
simple arithmetic) until they've gained enough experience to learn the
underlying CMP/Jcc mechanisms so they can write assembly language the
right way. But the bottom line is that before they finish the course,
they are no longer using IF/WHILE/etc. in their assembly programs. They
are writing pure assembly code at that point.


> On Betov's homepage there are download links to Iczelion's tuts and TD's
> tuts both ported to RosAsm

Sure. But those are not suitable for *beginning* assembly language
programmers. They're more for intermediate programmers who want to
learn specific programming techniques that just happen to use assembly
language.

>
> 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.

Obviously I don't agree, or I wouldn't have said anything negative
about them. I'm sure *someone* out there may find those tutorials of
value. But like RosAsm itself, those tutorials aren't something the
market is really looking for.


> 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.

???
That's what a reference manual does.

> (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 ;-)

Iczelion teaches you Win32 API programming, by using assembly. It
doesn't teach assembly language programming per se. It's been years
since I've looked at Test Department, and I don't remember what those
tutorials were like, so I won't comment directly on them, but IIRC they
were similar to the Iczelion tuts insofar as they were teaching
*Windows* programming.

> I did not learn Assembly solely to the fact of Betov's website and tools,

And this is the crux of the matter. If you've learned assembly
elsewhere, then a set of reference manuals (e.g., RosAsm documentation)
is about all you need to learn the new syntax and assembler features.
But keep in mind that you learned your *programming* and your *assembly
programming* skills elsewhere.

> 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 ;-)

Explain that to Rene. I've tried for many years.
As I've said many times in the past. When he stops trashing HLA, MASM,
and individuals who use these products, I will quickly ignore RosAsm
and life will get real quiet around here (well, assuming Hutch fades
away at one point or another :-( ).
>
> 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. :-)

Yes, but coming at x86 assembly from a previous assembly background
changes the equation for you entirely. Think back to the days when you
*first* learned assembly language. Would Izcelion, for example, have
been appropriate for you at that point?


Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

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