2 replies to this topic

[jivkoss]

I'm new to Assembly. I want to ask the "old dogs" how much time i have to spend programming in assembly to be able to write programs that i can eventually sell and programs that i can run on some devices and actually see the benefit of my work. I have little previous experience in basic programming from my high school years in Pascal, and in the university in C. I'm 20 years old. I couldn't find that in FAQ so I'll ask here: Are most of the people who post in that forum professionals programmers or mostly hobbysists? I recently read a book called "Hackers and Painters" which i really liked, but i wonder whether i try to learn a language to program on or not, because I know good programmers start programming at the age of 13. Will it take years of training till i reach a level when ill be able to write some nice programs. Can somebody who has been through all that and has vision on this kind of stuff please answer me? I'll really appreciate it!

[ryansithe]

assembly is not so much a programing language as it is a method of simplifying binary. For every kind of processor you use you will end up using a different kind of assembly. In my opinion, unless you were writing a program that needed incredible speed (like a bruteforce) you can probably trust the c compiler to convert your code to assembly well enough. I work with AVR micro controllers and there are so many different versions of them however mostly all of my c code is the same no matter which chip i am programing while the assembly the compiler produces is different

[dargueta]

I largely agree with ryansithe, but I want to make one clarification, though. Not every processor has a different language. Intel processors, for example, largely have the same assembly language and are all backwards-compatible. (I'm not entirely sure about the Itanium series, though.) Every now and then manufacturers have to break backwards compatibility, but they try to keep it consistent. This means that if you write a program for an 8086, it'll still run on a Pentium IV. The same is not true the other way around, however.