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Objectives

The aim of this chapter is to help you produce your first assembly language program with EasyCode and to understand some key points behind the script produced. To do this, you will need to be able to:

The idea behind this series of articles

There is no doubt that programming in assembler is somewhat more difficult than doing the same thing using a high-level language like C or VB. The benefits, however, are significant – smaller, faster programs and complete control over what’s happening. But the learning curve is steep, indeed, and that’s the reason for this article and those I propose to produce over the coming months.

But let’s get one thing clear – I am not an expert on assembler. I have a long experience writing programs in high level languages but I am new to low-level work like this. I see that as a strength, however. I know about programming but I can understand the frustration and problems surrounding the acquisition of the skills needed to produce assembler. What I propose to do is to write a bunch of articles which provide you with the survival skills needed to get writing code quickly by helping you avoid the pitfalls normally encountered by beginners. I will not be diving into every last detail of assembler – there are plenty of books for that and the goAsm documentation is fairly complete in that respect, although it’s not really geared towards the newcomer. My aim is that, at the end of these chapters, you’ll be fit to fight and learn more and more programming knowledge. It’s the initial “hump” that these articles are intended to help you over.

Normally, a programmer would write his code in a text editor (even just Notepad) and then use batch files to compile and link his code into an executable. But there’s a lot of work to do, especially since I will be concentrating purely on Windows programming and ignoring console DOS-type applications entirely. But, when we use EasyCode, a great deal of work is done for us, leaving us free to concentrate on those aspects that really matter – getting the code and the appearance of our Windows just right.

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