A question for Randall Hyde

[PD]

First off i thought i would just say what a great program HLA is. I have been reading your online version for about 3 days now and i can already write some pretty basic assembly programs like asking for 2 numbers and adding them together and printing out the total  then asking if you want another go.  Pretty basic i know but i did it when i never thought i would. Anyway the question i wanted to ask is where do i go after i have finished learning HLA? It won't be for a while yet but do i then learn the real assembly (not that HLA isn't real) that you all know?

Many Thanks
PD

[Randall Hyde]

Well, as long as you've learned all the low-level coding in HLA (that is, you're able to write code without using the HLL-like statements, if, while, for, etc.), then the next thing to do is start writing applications or functions that you link with other apps, in assembly language.

At some point or another you're going to want to learn syntax for other assemblers. Definitely start with MASM (it's the most standard syntax out there). That doesn't imply that you can do anything with MASM (or any other assembler) that you can't do in HLA, just that there is a lot of MASM code out there and you'll want to be able to read it (and translate it to HLA, if need be).  Every assembler in existence for the x86 pretty much uses a different syntax. If you're going to mess around with assembly much, you'll want to learn the basics of the syntax for several of these assemblers.  I'd recommend at least MASM, NASM, FASM, and Gas in addition to HLA.  Fortunately, once you learn assembly with HLA, getting a "reading knowledge" of the syntax of these other assemblers is pretty easy.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde