Re: Nasm v/s Gas

["Anticipating a Reply" <ruxyz@yahoo.com>]

Hello Everybody,

   Thank you for all the responses provided 
by all you learned people out there .

    As pointed out in the mails , I too 
was interested in learning Assembly to know
what is going on at the assembly level when
programming in C , so that I can write
HLL code that generates decent assembly.

    I would look forward to Mr.Randall Hyde's
new book which takes this aspect into 
consideration and thank him for his efforts .

    Thank you once again for all your inputs .

Best Regards !   
 


 --- Randall Hyde <aoax86@earthlink.net> wrote: > 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Robert Plantz" <plantz@SONOMA.EDU>
> To: "Randall Hyde" <aoax86@earthlink.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 9:24 PM
> Subject: Re: Nasm v/s Gas
> 
> 
> > Randy,
> > 
> > Thank you for your very thoughtful comments. I
> have consulted your
> > online book often and appreciate your expertise in
> this area.
> > 
> > I really should take the time to learn NASM
> > so I can make a better informed decision. (We have
> a 12 unit
> > teaching load every semester (no TAs), so it's a
> struggle just
> > to keep up.)
> > 
> > One thing to note is my parenthetical comment:
> > 
> > >> (The whole point of our class is to teach
> > >>     what is going on at the asm level when
> programming in C/C++.)
> > 
> > which I should have placed at the beginning.
> > 
> > We decided many years ago that it was not
> important for our
> > students to learn assembly language programming.
> Our course
> > was renamed "Computer Organization: Software". We
> really do
> > try to show approximately what the compiler is
> generating.
> > We are trying to demystify the machine operations
> going on
> > behind C. Within this context, the course serves
> as sort of
> > an introduction to computer architecture.
> 
> Well, that makes sense, then.  A machine
> organization course
> could easily get by with Gas since the purpose of
> teaching assembly
> in such a course is not to teach students how to
> write programs in
> assembly code, but to teaching them how to write HLL
> code that
> generates decent assembly.
> 
> > 
> > It's also important to note that I am at a CSU
> campus, not
> > a UC. Our courses are probably not quite as
> ambitious.
> 
> Actually, when I taught at CSU (Cal Poly Pomona), we
> actually
> got *farther* along in assembly than at UC.  The
> reason was simple:
> the students took a "digital electronics" course
> prior to the assembly
> course.  It wasn't really an electronics course
> (though they did wire
> up a few simple projects).  It really was a machine
> organization
> course where the students learned about numbering
> systems, digital
> logic, and a ton of other things that wind up
> consuming half the term
> in an assembly course without such a prerequisite. 
> It was great because
> I could get much farther in the assembly course.  At
> UCR, the
> "Machine Organization and Assembly Language
> Programming" course
> spent about 3-4 weeks covering all that prerequisite
> material prior to
> getting into the actual assembly programming.  With
> just six or seven
> weeks to teach assembly, you can't get very far,
> which is why I've always
> worked at figuring out how to make the process more
> efficient.
> 
> 
> > I fully understand that many people (including
> some of my
> > best friends  :-) ) do not agree with this
> philosophy.
> 
> Actually, if you'd just said that it was a Computer
> Organization course,
> I probably would have agreed with the approach right
> from the start.
> Indeed, I'm currently working on a new book that
> attempts to teach
> Machine Organization using HLLs as much as possible
> (and the last chapter,
> which I'm currently working on, covers HLL->machine
> code translation by
> a compiler).  Although it's obvious that a
> programmer who knows assembly
> language really well makes a good HLL programmer,
> I've never been convinced
> that you have to become an accomplished assembly
> programmer in order to
> write good HLL code.  I believe that by studying
> machine organization really
> well, it's quite possible to write the same quality
> HLL code that someone who
> know assembly would be capable of writing.  We'll
> see if this text I'm working
> on takes people a little bit closer to that goal.
> Randy Hyde
> 
> 
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