Posts Tagged ‘assembly’

The Four Great Temples A remarkable book. Donald McCallum gives the reader a uniquely valuable perspective on events in 7th-century Japan through archaeological and textual examinations of the “Four Great Temples”: …

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Author Arthur Clarke once wrote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Computers are a sufficiently advanced technology. To most, their inner workings are unfathomable. The percentage of people who seem to know how to get the computer to do useful work are known as “gurus”, “wizards”, and “hackers.” With all of the rapid change in the technology field, how is one to keep up?

Jeff Duntemann is like the magician who takes you behind the scenes of an illusion, and describes how things really work. He describes binary and hex mathematical systems, memory addressing, the tools used in creating programs, how programs interact with the hardware and OS, and much more.

Programming in assembly is a lost art. But it is fundamental to doing any computation in a mechanical fashion. Any higher level language must ultimately be translated or compiled into instructions a machine can understand. A programmer who does not have at least some familiarity with assembly will have difficulty debugging programs, writing efficient code, and understanding just what exactly a compiler or interpreter is doing to their code at a fundamental level.

But those who persevere with this book will understand what is going on under the hood.

Logic and math never go out of fashion. Duntemann’s stated goal was to show you how computers work, and he succeeded. If you are interested in understanding, and not just some fashionable language of the month, working through this book will be a worthwhile investment of time and money.
Assembly Language Step by

As a Southern white girl raised by black women who worked for our family, this book struck a deep chord. Seeing it from the other side was sometimes funny, sometimes difficult, but always made me think. The characters are well drawn and engaging.

I grew up during the civil rights movement, and recall well some “interesting” discussions between family members when my elementary school was being integrated for the first time. In many ways, The Help was a walk down memory lane. I was fortunate (as were the women and men employed by my parents and grandparents) to have a loving and respectful relationship with them. I hope they felt the same way. Racism has always been, personally for me, a foreign concept. Seeing it described so clearly in this book, I now recognize it’s sadly familar sharp & bitter shadow.

I loved this book all the way through, and hated to see it end. Highly recommend. I hope she writes a sequel!
PCI Network Sub Assembly | consciouscontact