Heyo guys, Assembly?

Hey,
So in a couple weeks i start my first programming course. We are doing micro controllers and we are learning something called assembly...

So first things first, what exactly is assembly? I know its machine code... or something... but other than that i don't know...
do you guys suggest any readings for me so i can try to get a head start?

I'm a network tech student. I know cisco IOS.... i know thats not programming, but just thought i should say that...

Thanks

 

LOL wow, you're in for a treat. Assembly is hard as fuck. It's basically only a couple steps up from binary, which you know as 0101010001001001. You're going to be manipulating a lot of memory to make your shit work.

I'd honestly recommend googling some books or tutorials and go through the whole thing to get ahead of the class, because if you jump in straight I doubt you'll have a good time. Assembly is definitely not easy.

Just to give you an idea, the following bit of code prints "Hello World" in a message box (this is for 32 bit Windows):

Code:

         .486p
         .model  flat,STDCALL
include  win32.inc
 
extrn            MessageBoxA:PROC
extrn            ExitProcess:PROC
 
.data
 
HelloWorld db "Hello, world!",0
msgTitle db "Hello world program",0
 
.code
Start:
         push    MB_ICONQUESTION + MB_APPLMODAL + MB_OK
         push    offset msgTitle
         push    offset HelloWorld
         push    0
         call    MessageBoxA
 
         push 0
         call ExitProcess
ends
end Start

 

Blupig's off his rocker. I loved my assembly course. We didn't use a real language and its annoying as fuck and its nearly impossible to find bugs and it will make you rip your hair out but I thought it was quite fun. Just force yourself to do it a lot and it is better.

 

I have to take it next year. Good luck us =(

 

can you recommend any tuts and books?



If you guys are wondering, this is a course where i build (solder together) a small sumo bot. We have to program it and everything.

 

I learnt TASM at College, writing programs for PIC microcontrollers but i've forgotten alot of the information.

 

In assembly, how would the code look if it just printed "Hello World" to the default output stream?