Hello everyone. I am wondering how to get started with ASM. I tried a few times to install things like radASM (and others) but I don't really know what they are all for. Can someone just tell me how to get started and about compilers/builders? Thanks.
davetheant 0 Newbie Poster
GunnerInc 7 xor eax, eax Team Colleague
RadASM, WinASM and a few others are only IDE's (Intergrated Development Enviroments) They provide text coloring, dialog editors, autocomplete, MDI, resource editors, and many more things to make coding easier. We use assemblers not compilers (sure I'll get flamed for that)... they don't assemble anything, they are the "front end" to the assemblers. You could use notepad to write your code, I prefer the syntax highlighting of the IDE's. They are a help to beginners. Next you need an assembler. MASM, TASM, NASM, FASM, HLA, JWASM and more.. these are capable of assembling windows programs. For a beginner, I would go with the MASM32 package, it contains all of the needed lib files, include files, samples (there are MANY samples on the net) and has a large community of users.. you can get it from:
http://masm32.com/
Start slow, it will come to you in time... don't try to write the next office replacement... start with a simple calculator, and go from there.. use 32 bit code instead of 16 bit... All my apps are written in assembly... Above all, have fun!
davetheant 0 Newbie Poster
Thanks a lot. I tried to download MASM32 earlier but I couldn't seem to get it to work. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing with it.lol Thanks.
BitBlt 452 Practically a Master Poster Featured Poster
Personally, when I was in your position, I chose nasm (because it's free :-)) and went from there. You can find the download and other resources at http://www.nasm.us/
If you choose another assembler, follow the same basic steps...then read, read, read.
For some great assembler tutorials, go to Pete's QuickBasic website (I know, asm is not qb) because it has lots of tutorials for beginners, lots of sample code, etc. It was really useful to me.
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/assembly.shtml
If you are really serious about learning assembler, this e-book is a must:
http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~lockwood/class/cs306/books/artofasm/toc.html
Good luck!
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