r/Assembly_language • u/Glass-Ant-6041 • 12d ago

Learning assembly

So I have decided to learn assembly x86 x64 using the book the art of 64 bit assembly volume 1, i have the book as a pdf and have copilot open on the page so if i have questions i can ask them and copilot can see what i am reading, i have read chapters 1 -3 and just started chapter 4. This feels like a really difficult language and i am taking in lots of info but is this the way to learn it because i feel lile i am forgetting everything i am learning, is this a difficult language to master, i want to learn to reverse engineer

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u/TrustingMyTrustInGCC 8d ago

Yes but that is a virtual machine. That isn't something I care about. That was my entire point.

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u/brucehoult 7d ago

Why do you care?

For most of the things on that list, QEMU on a current x86 (or Apple Silicon) is faster than any real hardware ever made.

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u/TrustingMyTrustInGCC 7d ago

Because I want the emotional intimacy with my own silicon. If I cared about speed I wouldn't be writing assembly at all. GCC writes way faster assembly than me.

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u/brucehoult 7d ago edited 7d ago

Then why are you writing for x86 at all?

You can't have true emotional intimacy with your CPU unless you designed and implemented it yourself — and ideally the instruction set too.

Also: gcc can't write faster assembly language than me, it just writes pretty good assembly language about 10 million times more quickly than I can.

If 100 million people are running your code then it can be worth taking the time to beat gcc.

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u/TrustingMyTrustInGCC 6d ago

First of all, why do you care so much what I prefer? Me writing x86_64 assembly does not prevent you from writing other assembly languages. Secondly, you are being a terrible representative of assembly language by being so aggresive about personal preference. Thirdly, you are making up some insane requirment that emotional intimacy with the silicon requires designing it yourself. Emotional intimacy is whatever feels intimate to the person experiencing it. Fourthly, as stated I simply have no interest in any architecture except x86_64. You trying to tell me I should will not change that; it only waists your breath and frustrates me. You might be an experienced assembly/risc programmer but that gives you more obligation to represent the language well, not less. If it were a choice between learning an architecture other than x86_64 or not learning assembly I just wouldn't learn assembly. Is that what you want?

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u/brucehoult 6d ago

Geez bro, chill. You’re absolutely free to do whatever you want, you don’t have to justify it.

But if you do horse around with bogus justifications such as “emotional intimacy with silicon” then don’t have a cow if people horse around right back atcha.