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The Art of Assembly Language Review by Ira Laefsky
The Best Instruction Available for Intel/IBM Assembly Language
I purchased my first Assembly Language Book by Randy Hyde on Apple II (6502) about 1982 in one of Boston's first computer stores.
I was amazed how a subject that was made difficult by well meaning Professors in my Computer Science curriculum could be taught exquisitely with cartoons and clear language in a book written for hobbyists. Randy has had almost thirty years since then in perfecting
his instructional and programming techniques for teaching assembly language since then and the current book illustrates this well.
Now that more powerful hardware has become available and even time critical and systems software (include entire operating systems) are
written in higher level languages, assembly language coding has become a forgotten black art. But it is still the best way of learning the relationship between a computer's hardware architecture and software implementation. While there are many books available today for
Intel Pentium Core Assemblers Randy's is still the best by far. He has taken in these recent editions the approach of implementing a
"higher-level" assembler with C/Java-like control structures which assembles to absolutely efficient and minimal machine code. In this
way he is able to teach beginners to assembly language a few statements at a time beginning with a C-like Hello World program and with a gentle introduction to CPU architecture; in a massive but easily understandable volume he proceeds to demonstrate a wide and inclusive variety of functions and data structures including string handling and object-oriented programming all implemented in efficient assembly
code.
This book is a tour de force of careful instruction in Assembly Language Programming, Machine Architecture, Data Structures and Efficient Techniques vital to the hobbyist and professional programmer. It should serve as a model of effective instruction in the
Computer Science Curriculum.
--Ira Laefsky
MSE/MBA Former Senior Consultant Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corporation