begin quoting Lan Barnes as of Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 04:15:21PM -0700:
[snip]
> I think it's fair to observe that learning something about at least one
> CPU's assembler is a Good Thing (for me it was the PDP-11 at SDSU in a
> course). And if you're going to learn just one, you might as well learn
> one you have at home, even though the Intel design is terribly (to me)
> convoluted and lacks any symmetry in its registers ("... and the J
> register is where you put times in milliseconds that are to be
> dereferenced backwards ...").
I'd say, if you're going to learn just one, learn one that isn't so
ugly and painful. (So says the man that gave up on x86 asm.)
If you're going to read a book, pick a good book, not a crappy one. If
necessary, go to the library to find a better book than what you happen
to have at home...
If you're going to learn how to work on a car, pick one where you don't
have to pull the engine to examine the spark-plugs -- even if that's the
sort of car you have at home.
Save the insanely convoluted tasks for after you've had a chance to
play with the basics in a more sane environment.
> But having had a cup of coffee in one, I'll never bother with another.
> Writing an application in assembler is like mowing a football field with
> a pair of nose-hair scissors. But you get such a nice cut ...
Heh.
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