5 comments about Sparc Architecture, Assembly Language Programming, and C.

1. For starters, the first apparent detail of this book is the glaring grammatical errors. Ok, no big deal, but still, it's an eyesore. The book is complex for the sake of complexity. Each chapter could easily be 2/3 or less the length it is now. The M4 macro is over-used and under-explained. If it used this much, a whole chapter should be devoted to it (at least more than a four page section covering few basics). The examples are poor and many of them simply don't work. A total lack of explanation as to what is actually going on "behind the scenes" as the macro does its work left me hung out to dry on many occasions. With way too much work, I reaped very little knowledge from this book. I can see this being a half-decent reference for those who have extensive knowledge of the M4 macro and previous experience in assembly language. If you're a beginner, stay miles away from this book. Books on a topic as inherently confusing as this need to be clearer and more extensive in their explanations and have examples that work.



2. This is one the best books I've read on computing. The presentation is down to earth, as in "here's how a computer do such and such, it's not thaat difficult, see?' which i like very much. It's a complete contrast to Hennesy & Patterson's 'Computer Architecture', which spends most of its pages surveying grand technologies this and that without really getting down to details. If you like to understand & build things yourself rather than admiring other peoples 'technologies', I think you'd like this book. For me, it's also a great place to learn how to write a compiler, because the approach is clear & simple, not overfed with formal-language theory that's the norm in compiler design texts.



3. I'm sorry, this book is an abomination! It makes a simple thing difficult. Students, prepare to suffer. This is one of the only SPARC books out there.



4. I picked up this book to familiarize myself with the SPARC architecture for an upcoming project and I was extremely disappointed in the presentation of the material, both grammatically and intuitively.
   
   First, when learning assembly language, the last thing a reader or student needs is the code to be obfuscated by a preprocessing tool such as m4. Hiding address offsets and variable alignments in nearly impossible to decipher macros is NOT helpful. This does not make it easier to learn assembly. I found myself learning more about a tool that I'll never use after finishing this book than about SPARC assembly.
   
   Second, whoever edited the manuscript for this book should be fired. I found myself editing the book as I read so I could understand what the author was trying to say. I also found the language to be a bit obtuse in a few, unfortunately important, places.
   
   Third, the diagrams in the book need some serious help as well. They were almost useless. Many of them made the topic being discussed more confusing. I found myself using Wikipedia or the Sparc V8 manual more than once.
   
   All that said, the book does try to cover the important aspects of the SPARC architecture. I did get the needed information from the book, but it could have been organized and presented much better.
   
   The book could be a great SPARC reference and tutorial book if these problems were addressed in a future edition.



5. This book is excellent considering the time it was produced and definitely an superb piece of work.
   
   But an update is needed as technologies have progressed much over the last 8-9 years; e.g. Sun Microsystems have incorporated the GCC compiler into their latest architectures like the x86-Opteron; to compare and offer new perspectives on the subject maybe advances in compiler technology, if any etc would be terrific.

No comments about IBM-PC: 8088 MacRo Assembler Programming.

1 comments about Assembly Language and Systems Programming for the M68000 Family.

1. Ford and Topps work is well structured,organised and clear. For
   students and professional engineers wishing to master Motorola's
   68000 and its siblings' assembly language this is an excellent text. The sections abound with examples and in pointing out how the orthogonal architecture of this processor and its rich addressing modes ease I/O programming as also for data structures.. linked lists, decision trees and so forth. The weakness if any is in the programming of the more sophisticated the second generation interface graphic, memory management chips which work in the asynchronous mode as also some discussion on the assembler vs high level block structured languages like C or C++. I hope to see this corrected in future editions.

5 comments about Mainframe Assembler Programming.

1. This is a very good book for someone who is new to assembler, but is also appropriate for someone familiar with an assembler language who wishes to learn mainframe assembler. Not only does this book describe the assembler instructions, but it explains important bit-level concepts and the use of structured programming techniques with assembler. The book begins with an example of a one-instruction assembler program for writing a message to the console. As new instructions are introduced, practical examples of their use are presented and explained. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises. The first exercise is always a set of True/False questions (with answers in the back of the book). The remaining exercises are simple programming problems. Included with this book is a copy of a freeware application for simulating a mainframe assembler in DOS. There is also an appendix which describes the steps that are needed on a mainframe to run mainframe assembler programs that were created on the PC. If your goal is to learn to write mainframe assembler programs, then I don't see how you could miss with this book.



2. This book is a fairly good intro to Assembler language on MVS. Programmers who have not got a clue about what Assembler is, will benefit from it. However, you'll outgrow this book in two weeks. Character and number representation is dealt in detail. But important concepts like base register, addressability and macro language are only mentioned here and there without any real treatment. This indeed leaves a big gap in the book. Do buy this book if you are really new in the world of Assembler. Don't buy this book if you are planning to become a systems programmer one day.



3. I need to know how comprehensive the pc/370 assembler is. Is it just a subset, or the whole thing, including macros? Is there a way I/you can contact the author?



4. This book is excellent for students, or for someone like me who had to get into mainframe assembler in a hurry. I was able to read the book in about 4 hours, and doing the examples in the book helped lock the concepts into my mind.

   I would like to see a section with more information on the mainframe and additional material on more advanced subjects. Some preparation on the kinds of assembler errors to expect from the mainframe would be nice too.




5. After struggling for weeks in a local community college online class using Peter Abel's Programming Assembler Language book with the PC370 IBM370 emulator, I happened upon a link to Bill Quall's excellent book. It is extremely readable, has excellent, clearly documented & complete programs to illustrate concepts, and very educational end of chapter quizzes with answers in the back. Best of all, it is written specifically to work with Don Higgin's PC370 emulator (the differences are few, but important). I doubt I would have passed the class without this book (due to lack of applicable information in the resources I had prior to finding this book).
   
   The only thing I could come up with (and it is only a caution, not a true negative) is that although the book is 563 pages, it does not go as far as I would like. I would love to have a volume 2 by the same author which describes use of multiple CSECT programs and MACRO writing (and whatever else I don't know I'm missing).
   
   Another caution: I paid $25 or so for a used copy and now the only copy I see online is offered at $99 (used), so I might look around a bit or try to plow through the IBM Principles of Operations (free online) unless I absolutely needed to get up to speed quickly for class or work.
   
   Overall, I cannot praise the writing style and educational value of this book highly enough, especially for a newbie to mainframe assembly programming (don't think it will be of much use to those wanting to learn Intel assembly!)

No comments about Accelerated Productivity 10: Assemblies and Advanced Concepts, An Interactive Course for Autodesk Inventor 10.

4 comments about Assembler Language with Assist and Assist 1 (4th Edition) (Macmillan Programming Languages Series).

1. Overbeek, and Singletary ROCK! I am a college student at Northern Illinois University. As you might guess, my major is computer science. I purchased this book used for an assembler class 2 years ago, and have used it every semester since. It is written simply enough for the novus to understand, but contains information that established programmers need to refer too. PLEASE, Dont let this one go out of print!



2. This book is a wonderful examination of the HISTORY of computing. Reading this will make anyone appreciate how much we've advanced since the days of hip huggers Richard Nixon. As for joshg comments, I am scared to think of how poor a program NIU must have judging by his writing skills. Does anyone teach 360/370 assembler anymore?



3. This book was the reason I passed my assembler class with an A.

   I would recommend some prior knowledge of a higher-level language before using this book, but one doesn't have to be an advanced programmer to use it.




4. Every other sentence in this book is in the passive voice and full of superfluous verbage. The information is often jumbled together without any consistent pattern of organization that I can discern. I found studying from this book to be difficult. The on-line IBM documentation on the 370 instruction set is much more concise, better written, and better organized. Of course, IBM can afford to hire professional technical writers.

No comments about Successful Assembly Automation: A Development and Implementation Guide.

No comments about Programming the 6809.

3 comments about Computer Organization and the MC68000.

1. This book is, in every way confusing and poorly written. It is poorly organized, making it extraordinarily difficult to understand the fundamentals of assembly language programming. There were also dozens of careless errors, some of which made concepts almost impossible to understand. Professors: Please do not inflict this book upon your students



2. It's clear the author is not a real author but some instructor somewhere. This book is no more than a bunch of incoherent notes full of mistakes and bad assumptions. Unfortunately, this is used as a text book in colleges. If a professor uses this garbage in class, DROP the class.



3. Explained the fundementals well. I thought that it was for the most part readable. Sometimes had annoying typo's in examples that made things hard to follow.

5 comments about Assembly Language for the IBM PC Family (3rd Edition).

1. Usually it is enough to go thru the first few chapters to know a book's usefulness. Reading just the first Chapter is enough to convince that this an excellent (possibly best!) book on Assembly Language.



2. I am a student (not a lazy one; 4.0GPA) and I can assure you that this book was NOT written with students in mind. I am very irritated by how this book is un(organized) and put together carelessly. The examples are HORRIBLE and imcomplete. Somehow I get the feeling that the other reviewers are related to the author because any serious student/programmer/instructor that has thoroughly used this book would certainly avoid it at all costs.

   Here are a few irritating things:
   Exercises with multiple items are not ordered (like 1.1, 1.2 or a) b) c)... and so on. It takes me more time to check my answers than to really complete the exercises.

   In some chapters most of the exercises do NOT have answers.

   The author makes you flip back during the explanation several times. I do NOT have time or patience for this.

   Also, the information is very superficial and the book focus greatly on using the macros and libraries that come with the included CD, of course, instead of giving you enough to write them yourself.

   For any serious programmer, I recommend instead Irvine's book "Assembly language for intel-based computers".

   After the semester is over I will burn this and broadcast it over the internet : ) I would not sell it to anyone, not even for a dollar it is not worth it.




3. This is a very to easy to read book for learning the basics. Well written, but may be missing too many technical details for a higher level college course.



4. This is quite possibly the worst book on any program language I've ever read; and as a CS student that's had to deal with quite a bit of books that talk down to you and read like a snapshot of a computer snob's psyche, that's saying a lot.
   
   Let me say now that, in my opinion, the definitive way to write about a language was done well over a decade ago by Kernighan & Ritchie, called "The C Programming Language." The back cover spells their mission statement quite well: "C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book." Their clear and concise coverage of the language makes it an invaluable reference guide for anyone who actually works with C on a professional level, and in barely over 200 pages they present the subject with an unmatched lucidity.
   
   That being said, I submit to you that assembly is an even smaller language than C. Not as straightforward, yes, but in terms of instructions and procedures, it pales in comparison. Why, then, is this tome over 700 pages?! One might say this is because to know assembly, you must understand at least something about computers at a basic level; how things are represented in hardware, how to interact with the OS, the stack, etc., etc. Fine. K&R explain all that, too. The terminology might be different (though in reality, it isn't much), but the concepts are the same. There is absolutely no reason for a book on this subject to be over, say, 400 pages.
   
   I purchased this as it was required by a class I had to take. There must be a limited selection of books on this subject, because even the professor admitted that the examples were often horrible in their ways of trying to illustrate the concepts. And I must concur. The very notation and styles used within the book change often and tend to confuse rather than to help. The variegated comments in the examples, even the ones following the critical instructions it's trying to teach, are at best unhelpful and often not there at all. The surrounding paragraphs seem as if they were written by David Brent; wrapped up in conjecture and asinine turns of phrase. The numerous and often irrelevant/misplaced asides would serve to confuse even the most prodigious of readers, and exhibit the need of the author for a lesson on pacing.
   
   To add to all of this, the index, which is an _extremely_ valuable part of any reference book, seems as if it was generated by either a computer program or a listless editor. Following the referenced page numbers more often than not leads you to impervious blocks of text that use the function it's purported to explain only in the most cursory manner. The explanations of subject matter are disjointed and strewed about as if fired scattershot across its 700+ pages.
   
   Now, I realize that if you're reading this at all you probably are being forced to buy this book by a professor as I was; at the very least for the (now several versions behind) copy of MASM it contains. Woe is you. Perhaps complaining to your professor might bear fruit. Perhaps it'll get your grade lowered. Either way, if I can dissuade at least one non-compulsory purchase, I'll be more than happy I took the time to write this. Thank you.



5. This review refers to the 3rd edition. I've used this book for a course on assembly language and found that this book was all I needed to do well in class. I still find myself referring to it every now and then, and it's definitely the best book I have on assembly language. The author also has a very friendly writing style so that definitely helps. Important points are highlighted and placed in boxes so you keep them in mind when programming. Overall it's a great book, I highly recommend it!