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by ktRolster 3694 days ago

>Would anyone actually recommend to a beginner to start learn assembly first?

Yes, if you can find a good book about it. Assembler isn't particularly difficult, but the information teaching it is rather hard.

Right now, the lowest-level language I know of with a really good beginner book is C, and it's this book: http://smile.amazon.com/Absolute-Beginners-Guide-C-2nd/dp/06...

4 comments

matthewwiese 3693 days ago

The C book you recommended is the exact same one my mum bought for me years ago in late elementary school; I've never seen it mentioned on HN or elsewhere before so I thought I'd also vouch to its effectiveness.

Now that I think of it, I should give my mum a call :)

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ktRolster 3693 days ago

Yeah, I used to recommend it to students who were struggling. So far everyone I know who's tried it has succeeded. It teaches in a very clear way.

I hope my books do too :)

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chetanahuja 3693 days ago

I've used Little Man Computer successfully to teach even very young kids (elementary school age) basics of computer architecture and a very basic assembly language. Some reading materials and a java based LMC simulator here: http://www.yorku.ca/sychen/research/LMC/

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e12e 3693 days ago

Out of curiosity, have you looked at the 3rd edition?

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Absolute-Beginners-Guide-3...

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_kst_ 3693 days ago

I just took a look at the "LOOK INSIDE!" sample available on amazon.com. A few observations:

The front cover says it's been "Updated for C11", but all the sample programs use "main()" rather than "int main(void)". The form without an explicit return type has been invalid since C99.

Page 11:

"In 1983, ANSI created the X3J11 committee to set a standard version of C. This became known as ANSI C. The most recent version of ANSI C, C11, was formally adopted in 2011."

That's loosely correct, but in fact the 1990, 1999, and 2011 editions of the C standard were published by ISO, not by ANSI (and later adopted by ANSI). Furthermore, it ignores the fact that the phrase "ANSI C" is commonly but incorrectly used to refer to the 1989/1990 version of the language (see gcc's "-ansi" option, for example).

Page 16:

"These are functions:

main() calcIt() printf() strlen()

and these are commands:

return while int if float"

No, those aren't "commands", they're keywords. I can't think of any reasonable meaning of the word "command" that would include "int".

Page 26:

The sample program listing is not properly indented.

Page 36:

"\b moves the cursor back a line".

No, it moves the cursor back a column.

A book for beginning C programmers should not have these kinds of errors after three editions.