Learning assembly [closed]

Answer 1

I started out learning MIPS which is a very compact 32-bit architecture. It is a reduced instruction set, but that's what makes easy to grasp for beginners. You will still be able to understand how assembly works without getting overwhelmed with complexity. You can even download a nice little IDE, which will allow you to compile your MIPS code: clicky Once you get the hang of it, i think it would be much easier to move on to more complex architectures. At least that's what i thought :) At this point you will have the essential knowledge of memory allocation and management, logic flow, debugging, testing and etc.

Answer 2

(I don't know about you but I was excited with assembly)

A simple tool for experimenting with assembly is already installed in your pc.

Go to Start menu->Run, and type debug

debug (command)

debug is a command in DOS, MS-DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows (only x86 versions, not x64) which runs the program debug.exe (or DEBUG.COM in older versions of DOS). Debug can act as an assembler, disassembler, or hex dump program allowing users to interactively examine memory contents (in assembly language, hexadecimal or ASCII), make changes, and selectively execute COM, EXE and other file types. It also has several subcommands which are used to access specific disk sectors, I/O ports and memory addresses. MS-DOS Debug runs at a 16-bit process level and therefore it is limited to 16-bit computer programs. FreeDOS Debug has a "DEBUGX" version supporting 32-bit DPMI programs as well.

Tutorials:

• A Guide to DEBUG
• How PC Programs Work: Understanding x86 (Intel) Machine Code
• DEBUG Tutorial

If you want to understand the code you see in IDA Pro (or OllyDbg), you'll need to learn how compiled code is structured. I recommend the book Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering

I experimented a couple of weeks with debug when I started learning assembly (15 years ago).
Note that debug works at the base machine level, there are no high level assembly commands.

And now a simple example:

Give a to start writing assembly code - type the below program - and finally give g to run it.

(INT 21 display on screen the ASCII char stored in the DL register if the AH register is set to 2 -- INT 20 terminates the program)

Answer 3

Lots of good answers here. Low-level programming, assembly etc are popular in the security community, so it is worthwhile looking for hints and tips there once you get going. They even have some good tutorials like this one on x86 assembly.

Answer 4

We learned assembly with a microcontroller development kit (Motorola HC12) and a thick datasheet.

Answer 5

One of the standard pedagogic assembly languages out there is MIPS. You can get MIPS simulators(spim) and various teaching materials for it.

Personally, I'm not a fan. I rather like IA32.

Answer 6

I'll go against the grain of most answer and recommend Knuth's MMIX variant of the MIPS RISC architecture. It won't be as practically useful as x86 or ARM assembly languages (not that they're all that crucial themselves in most real-life jobs these days...;-), but it WILL unlock for you the magic of Knuth's latest version of the greatest-ever masterpiece on deep low-level understanding of algorithms and data structures -- TAOCP, "The Art of Computer Programming". The links from the two URLs I've quoted are a great way to start exploring this possibility!