Learning and re-learning no comments
Today I’ll review two books I read: Professional Assembly and Assembly Language Step-By-Step.
One interesting thing is that both approach the same topic, teaching assembly language, from different perspectives. Step-by-step takes care of explaining the history of Intel’s CPU architecture, from the segmented mode to flat mode, detailing the intricacies of segmented programming along the way. It takes over 150 pages just to get to the first line of assembly code in the book.
Professional assembly on the other hand is a rocket ship, taking no apologies and going full throttle into Intel’s assembly structures and the GNU’s assembler (gas) syntax.
Step-by-step takes care of explaining basic computer architecture so that in the end you can understand assembly and it’s logic. Professional assumes you know that and blasts off, which I think in the end makes it a better book.
You see I’ll probably go back to Professional Assembly when I need a reference or review a topic, because Step-by-step while good at explaining things, once you got them there ain’t much left to go back to. Now you may ask me, which one should you buy? My answer is:
Both.
You see, one thing that I learned is that it’s good to study a particular topic several times, even if you are already familiar with it. An authors approach, no matter how good it is, will not be universal. That’s because it’s his approach to the topic, there are other things that can either be better explained or better elaborated upon.
And the more you look and study at a particular topic, the more universal your approach to it will be.
