Guide to Assembly Language: A Concise Introduction 2011th Edition

From the reviews:

“The well-organized book is divided into ten chapters and five appendixes. The ten chapters follow a fairly standard layout for a book on this language, with each chapter concluding with a summary section and an appropriate set of exercises … . Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.” (J. Beidler, Choice, Vol. 49 (2), October, 2011)

“It teaches assembly language with precision and verve, and it also provides the reader with some understanding of the computer architecture that drives assembly language. … This book is an excellent text for a course in assembly language programming, and for programmers who want to understand the low-level operations and constructs that underlie high-level languages. Its attention to machine issues also makes it suitable as a supplemental text in a course on computer operations or architecture.” (Marlin Thomas, ACM Computing Reviews, August, 2011)

Although the need for assembly language programmers has decreased, the need to understand assembly language has not, and it is important to actually write assembly language code if one is to understand it thoroughly.

This Guide to Assembly Language will enable the reader to very quickly begin programming in assembly language. Through this hands-on programming, readers will also learn more about the computer architecture of the Intel 32-bit processor, as well as the relationship between high-level and low-level languages. The book can either be used as a stand-alone text in a one-semester course on assembly language, or as a supplementary text in a computer organization and architecture course.

Topics and features:

• Presents an overview of assembly language, and an introduction to general purpose registers
• Illustrates the key concepts of each chapter with complete programs, chapter summaries, and exercises (with answers to selected exercises provided in the Appendices)
• Covers input/output, basic arithmetic instructions, selection structures, and iteration structures
• Introduces logic, shift, arithmetic shift, rotate, and stack instructions
• Discusses procedures and macros, and examines arrays and strings
• Investigates machine language from a discovery perspective
• Provides an overview of binary and hexadecimal, logic, and arithmetic in the Appendices, together with a Glossary, and a section on Visual C++ and MASM

This textbook/reference is an ideal introduction to programming in assembly language for undergraduate students in computer science, as well as a concise guide for professionals wishing to learn how to write logically correct programs in a minimal amount of time.

Dr. James T. Streib is Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois USA.