Newbie questions

[skyflier]

Hi, I am very new to both assembly language and easycode. I have been a developer for many years using many traditional dev tools like delphi, vb and others but I am frustrated by all of the bloated code especially in java and .net. I am so far very impressed with easycode and I hope that it will continue to grow and get even better. I have a few questions/comments which may have been answered before so please excuse any duplication and feel free to just point me in the right direction.

1. Are there any code snippets/templates available? ie. A msgbox snippet etc. would be very useful for newbies like me to do the most basic stuff
2. What is the status of assembly and easycode with the upcoming Windows Vista. Are there any issues/problems that we might have.
3. I have seen the tutorials section which is great, are you planning on putting together a document for beginners to get into easycode?
4. I am not 100% certain on the differences between choosing masm32 or genesys when you install. Can you explain this for me.
5. Where is the best place to get code samples/app samples (ie. for VB programmers they have www.freevbcode.com do we have anything similar dedicated to us)

Thank you very much and keep up the wonderful work

Kind Regards
Neil
(Brisbane, Australia)

[Ehtyar]

YAY, another aussie newbie, that might make 8 now :P
As you may have noticed i am an Australian myself, from Sydney, as is the primary developer of MASM, Hutch--. Although i cannot answer all your questions, i will answer those that i can.

As far as examples are conserned, the most important place to go for these is Iczelion's Site. These tutorials and code examples are somewhat of a rite of passage for all asm newbies, read these and you will be a pro in no time. This site should cover almost any question you have on assembly, and if not, this board, or MSDN should do the trick.

I am currently unaware of any incompatibilities with Windows Vista and the assembly language at this time, and i can't imagine there is any likelyhood of there being any, though i dare say this will be the place to keep an eye on if any are found.

As for the GeneSys vs. MASM debate, i recommend installing MASM, then integrating GeneSys into it. They both are very similar, though each comes with its own library of custom functions. You should be safe to simply install GeneSys, then install MASM over the top of it, so you'll have the best of both worlds :)

Hope this helps, and feel free to post any more questions you have right here, i;m sure myself or another board member will be more than happy to answer them.

Ehtyar.

P.S. If you're interested in a little live help during the newbie stages (I know first hand this is a nice thing to have) consider the #asm irc channel on EFNet.

[skyflier]

Hi Ehtyar, thanks for the answers they have certainly helped. I am going to spend some time with this and see where I get to. I do have a particular application in mind which I wrote a while back in good old VB 6 which for obvious reasons I would like to port over. The application is client side and needs to run on Windows 9x - XP/Vista which it currently does but not very well all the time. I am then going to code the server portion again as well depending on time. My major issue is to be able to create a standalone Windows app with as little clutter as possible for the widest audience (ie. no .NET or JVM or anything like that). I will post more specific questions as they come up.

Cheers
Neil

[Ramon Sala]

Hi Skyflier,

Thank you very much for your kind words about Easy Code. Well, I think most of your questions has been answered and I'd just like to add that, as far as I know, there are no incompatibilities with Vista, even though I do not know it by sure.

About Masm32 or GeneSys, they both use the Microsoft's 32-bit compiler (ml.exe) and linker (link.exe), so they are very simliar and work fine.

Now I'm working on a new version of Easy Code for Jeremy Gordon's GoAsm tools as I think it is a very good compiler and linker. If there are no further problems, Easy Code for GoAsm will be ready very soon.

Regards and thanks again,

Ramon

[PBrennick]

skyflier,
Every time I see someone begin to learn assembly, I get excited. It has always been the love of my life and that will always be true.

About your server/client software; I am sure that you prefer to do your own work but there is nothing wrong with others helping should you need it. Striker, James Ladd, comes to mind as someone who could be quite helpful to you as he specializes at Client/Server stuff.

About using GeneSys as opposed to using masm32, Hutch's package (masm32) has been around for a long time now and is VERY stable.

Paul

[Ehtyar]

Please disregard my comment about a "GeneSys vs. MASM32 Debate". It was a poor choice of words on my part and to the best of my knowlege, most people who make use of GeneSys, use it in conjunction with MASM. Not to mention, the developers of each project support the work of eachother.

Ehtyar.