Author Topic: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?  (Read 34931 times)

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Offline Galandros

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #15 on: April 24, 2010, 04:09:24 am »
I just don't think my brain is equipped for this type of logic. Maybe it's true that people who are inclined toward certain skills or reasoning will be less inclined toward others. For instance: I'm good with grammar and creative writing, but I'm absolutely terrible at math. I can force myself to learn how some particular task is done, but then I could literally forget how it was done just a few minutes later. When it comes to writing, I very easily understand the patterns because they're based in words.
Curious.
For me, solving programming problems is very much like solving mathematical problems. I always have the same feeling while solving math problems and think in a way to code things. The kind of intelligence required must be similar, both in math and programming you are dealing a lot with numbers and variables.
About interpreting text, language and visual things, I don't have the same ease but I am ok at it.

I already learned assembly and captured the concepts with some difficulty and time. Some parts of ASM in 28 days I didn't understand at first because of C stuff there and advanced without had really learned a few things.

I long had the idea to write a ASM tutorial, without low level languages experience.
Maybe we can exchange some text and ideas. My advice right now is planning very well the tutorial.
Do the brainstorm of what topics are needed and their order (in a logical way, of course).
Then write some notes to remember to put examples, images, well commented source code examples, etc..
Finally write the topics, focusing on the first topics.
Hobbing in calculator projects.

Offline mapar007

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #16 on: April 24, 2010, 04:39:22 am »
Strange... I don't wanna brag, but I'm good at language logic and 'mathematical' logic (I'm in a Latin+math group at school), so it's not necessarily an XOR. Then again, I have other big flaws. E.g. sometimes I just can't tell whether someone is mocking me or being serious (in real life). Very annoying and embarrassing.

As for my ASM learning curve: I basically did the tutorial once, hardly understanding half of it. Then, after a few months, I tried again, and I worked through everything up till the last few days. Next, exercise, exercise and more exercise. As soon as I mastered the basic concepts of the language, I tackled the rest of the tutorial, did some more coding, and well, here I am. :)
« Last Edit: April 24, 2010, 04:39:48 am by mapar007 »

Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #17 on: April 24, 2010, 05:01:02 am »
Quote
I long had the idea to write a ASM tutorial, without low level languages experience.
Maybe we can exchange some text and ideas. My advice right now is planning very well the tutorial.
Do the brainstorm of what topics are needed and their order (in a logical way, of course).
Then write some notes to remember to put examples, images, well commented source code examples, etc..
Finally write the topics, focusing on the first topics.

Dude, thanks for the advice!

Offline Levak

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #18 on: April 24, 2010, 05:28:10 am »
Well, I think it could be a very attractive idea.
I tried to learn ASM with a BIG french pdf tutorial (which I didn't finished yet) traduced from an english one. It was only for 8x86 ASM and was very well written.
Thus I'am interested in your contribution.
On the other hand, on which "architecture" will you be based to write this ASM tutorial ? z80/68k/ARM ?

ARM, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaze !

*is running away*
I do not get mad at people, I just want them to learn the way I learnt.
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Offline mapar007

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #19 on: April 24, 2010, 05:31:24 am »
It's Z80

Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #20 on: April 24, 2010, 05:34:16 am »
Yes, it's z80, but once you get the basic idea behind ASM in general, it doesn't take months to transfer from one form of asm to another.  It's the basics that people have a hard time with.

Offline mapar007

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #21 on: April 24, 2010, 05:38:45 am »
I've always wanted to learn x86, but due to lack of good guides, I never actually managed. The concepts are the same, but you don't have the same degree of control, sadly enough :( (j/k, security would be a bitch)

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #22 on: April 24, 2010, 11:49:13 am »
Well, I think it could be a very attractive idea.
I tried to learn ASM with a BIG french pdf tutorial (which I didn't finished yet) traduced from an english one. It was only for 8x86 ASM and was very well written.
Thus I'am interested in your contribution.
On the other hand, on which "architecture" will you be based to write this ASM tutorial ? z80/68k/ARM ?

ARM, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaze !

*is running away*
z80 actually, since pretty much all of Omnimaga are 83+/84+ users. I think we only have two 68k users and one is never active. For ARM, we have about 3 or 4 TI-Nspire coders, I think. It would be nice to see someone else write an ARM ASM tutorial written in a similar way as Hot_Dog tutorial. Hopefully, various types of tutorials can help more people. Those who find the alerady existing tutorials to be too hard can simply try other ones.

Example: this is not ASM but still related to tutorial difficulty: I couldn't understand some of the memory management commands in Axe Parser after reading the command list, and that lasted until I reread how they work in the documentation PDF. It was worded differently and put into some context, so I could understand more.

Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #23 on: April 24, 2010, 12:16:45 pm »
Well, I think it could be a very attractive idea.
I tried to learn ASM with a BIG french pdf tutorial (which I didn't finished yet) traduced from an english one. It was only for 8x86 ASM and was very well written.
Thus I'am interested in your contribution.
On the other hand, on which "architecture" will you be based to write this ASM tutorial ? z80/68k/ARM ?

ARM, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaze !

*is running away*
z80 actually, since pretty much all of Omnimaga are 83+/84+ users. I think we only have two 68k users and one is never active. For ARM, we have about 3 or 4 TI-Nspire coders, I think. It would be nice to see someone else write an ARM ASM tutorial written in a similar way as Hot_Dog tutorial. Hopefully, various types of tutorials can help more people. Those who find the alerady existing tutorials to be too hard can simply try other ones.

Example: this is not ASM but still related to tutorial difficulty: I couldn't understand some of the memory management commands in Axe Parser after reading the command list, and that lasted until I reread how they work in the documentation PDF. It was worded differently and put into some context, so I could understand more.

Which reminds me, there may be one or two people who don't understand a topic no matter what, and that's life; but I am hoping people will let me know that they don't understand, because if several don't, I know I need to slow down

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #24 on: April 24, 2010, 12:30:11 pm »
Yeah this is what I thought. Kinda like Axe Parser doc. I reviewed it a few times and would tell Quigibo when I didn't understand something. It's a good thing people like you, him, Calc84maniac (who wanted to write a similar tutorial back in 2006 or 2007) and Iambian (same) have people with slower learning capacitity in languages and visual people in mind when wanting to write a tutorial. The same wouldn't have happened to sgm/sigma on UTI (who wrote ASM In 28 days). I remember some stuff from him in reply to people saying they don't understand the tutorial that he felt the tutorial was explained as good as needed. Later he finally started writing a new one, but despite being slightly more explained, he said he won't bother explaining in further details if people don't get it and if someone don't understand a part of the tutorial then it's the person's problem. He did not say this like that but he pretty much implied it. It's good he wrote such tutorial, though, a great tutorial, even. I wonder if it got featured on ticalc.org because I think it deserves a feature if it isn't. It's just that some other people like you and Quigibo for example are more open-minded toward other people's differences

Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #25 on: April 24, 2010, 10:02:46 pm »
hmm i would love to learn asm if i could but imma gonna stick with basic for a long while first XD although ill gladly help read threw it and see what could be challenging/needing better wording XD

Offline Madskillz

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #26 on: April 24, 2010, 10:42:00 pm »
I've been doing assembly for a while now for a pretty decent amount of time. I think it is a great idea to have more help out there. You can never have enough examples/documentation out there to learn from. I constantly find myself learning something new every time I pick a project up again. We can always use some more great z80 projects out there. I am far from an expert on z80 so always like to see what else I can learn.

Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #27 on: April 24, 2010, 11:11:20 pm »
Alrighty then, I'll write the tutorials.  This is the first lesson.  I put it out this early because I would like some feedback.  Please provide feedback; because this is the first time I'm doing this, my first few lessons are going to have bugs and might not even be the best they could be.  As soon as I get enough feedback, I'll put tutorials in a seperate forum.

Specifically,

1. Did you understand the lesson?
2. How long did you take it to understand it?  Did you only have to read it once, twice?  Did you have to read it several times?  Was it easy for you?
3. If you didn't understand this lesson, why?
4. Is there something you feel I'm missing that I should have explained?
5. Did you have fun?
6. Do you look forward to more lessons in the future?
« Last Edit: April 24, 2010, 11:12:00 pm by Hot_Dog »

Offline Quigibo

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #28 on: April 25, 2010, 12:13:47 am »
I think the hardest part of learning asm is the shift in paradigm.  In my opinion, someone with very little programming background will be able to learn the language and understand it better initially than someone who has exclusively programmed in higher level languages their whole lives.  I remember the concept of flags, registers, unsigned arithmetic, bit shifting, etc.  seemed so foreign to me when I was first learning.  You never cover that stuff in high level.  In my head I kept trying to make my code look and feel like the languages I was used to so then it would all be simple and I could just naturally pick it up.  But you can't do that, its impossible.  You miss all the concepts that are absolutely essential to do all the low level tasks which is the whole point.

You have to start with a very open mind.  Your knowledge of how to ride a bike isn't going to help you much when you're trying to fly a helicopter.  It took me about a whole summer to get the hang of it and it was almost a year before I could write a game with it.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2010, 12:14:14 am by Quigibo »
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Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: How Many People would want to learn ASM if they could?
« Reply #29 on: April 25, 2010, 12:20:36 am »
I think the hardest part of learning asm is the shift in paradigm.  In my opinion, someone with very little programming background will be able to learn the language and understand it better initially than someone who has exclusively programmed in higher level languages their whole lives.  I remember the concept of flags, registers, unsigned arithmetic, bit shifting, etc.  seemed so foreign to me when I was first learning.  You never cover that stuff in high level.  In my head I kept trying to make my code look and feel like the languages I was used to so then it would all be simple and I could just naturally pick it up.  But you can't do that, its impossible.  You miss all the concepts that are absolutely essential to do all the low level tasks which is the whole point.

You have to start with a very open mind.  Your knowledge of how to ride a bike isn't going to help you much when you're trying to fly a helicopter.  It took me about a whole summer to get the hang of it and it was almost a year before I could write a game with it.

Can you explain that?  Are you saying I should not talk to people with the idea of Ti-Basic, assuming that they know that language?  Otherwise, what do you mean?