Re: Book on Assembly


Betov wrote:

I don't know what the word "nifty" means,

It means "good", or "really good" in this context.

but i suppose
you mean "difficult". If so, yes, they are.

FASM macros are not that difficult at all. Try learning some real
assembly language sometime and you'd discover how useful FASM macros
can be. And once you get to that point, learn a little more and
discover how much more powerful MASM/TASM macros are. And once you
master that level, try HLA macros. :-)

But they are
1) general purpose Macros 2) extreemely powerful. So, it
is quite natural that they cannot be easy.

Utter nonsense. Just because you have troubles understanding macros
doesn't mean everyone else finds them hard.



So said, this is evidenty the job of a FASM Manual to
explain this, and NOT the job of an Assembly course.

Yes, it is the job of the FASM manual to explain this. It does not
follow, however, that macros shouldn't be taught in an assembly course,
or (in particular) in a book that teaches assembly language using FASM.
Any decent programmer who has finished a book on assembly language
should, at the very least, have a reasonable familiarity with the macro
facilities of the assembler covered in the book. People *use* macros.
If you don't teach the beginners about them, they'll be lost when they
start reading other people's code.


I don't care of what it "mean". It is not GPLed. Period.

And that has nothing to do with whether a book should use the
assembler. The vast majority of books written on assembly language
using MASM or TASM. So clearly the market for assembly language books
doesn't agree with you, either.


Now, the fact is that no collaboration, of any kind, has
ever been possible with Thomasz, for anybody, including
me.

You mean, *especially you*.
And once again, whether Tomasz collaborates with other people in the
design of his assembler has absolute zero bearing on whether a book
should use FASM.

I just point to the fact, and, personaly, i regret it,

I'm sure you do. You obviously want to ride the coattails of FASM's
popularity and it grieves you that the FASM crowd will have none of
this.

as long as there is absolutely no need of having xxxxxxxx
Assemblers. We need two ot three:

* A General purpose one.

We have that. It's called GAS. Or NASM if you prefer.

* A PE specific one.

We have that, it's called MASM. Or TASM if you prefer.


* ... plus, may be, a Linux Specific one, the day Linux
Assembly would really exist.

Why?
NASM, GAS, HLA, and FASM all work fine under Linux. Why do you think
there would be a need for an assembler that runs *only* under Linux?
What benefit would that serve?


Now, even those categories should have shared the same
base, in matter of Encoder. This has been impossible
because of demential attitudes like Thomasz one, what
achieved into nothing but splitting the efforts into
as many Assembler as Author. This was simply absurdly
selfish and counter-productive.

As opposed to the great Betov who has written a native code generator,
that while it is GPL'd, is absolutely tied to RosAsm and PE code and
can't be used elsewhere. This is simply absurd, selfish, and
counter-productive. Not to mention the arrogance you display by
telling us how Tomasz ought to write his own code when you, yourself,
don't provide a generic solution.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

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