Which visual development and flavor of asm

[Alley]

Hi I was looking to find a good visual ide and version of asm to learn.

So far easy code / go asm looks relatively good, although I don't want to waste my time learning the wrong versions, am I on the right path?

[dedndave]

it is a matter of taste, to some degree
it depends on what you want to learn
EasyCode is probably a good way to get started, although you don't necessarily learn low-level coding that way
but, it will get you up and running and you can learn the low-level stuff as you go
GoAsm is a great assembler - easier in some respects than masm

[BlackVortex]

I use notepad++ and batch files to do my stuff.

GoAsm is great, the only real drawback is that it doesn't have runtime conditional, forget about magical if/elseif statements, you will have to use labels a lot.   :(
But it's worth it for me.

Anyway, you could start with masm, the transition is pretty easy ! If you use masm, you should use jwasm actually (opensource and better, 99.9% compatible)

[Alley]

Ok glad to hear that easycode seems to be recommended although I noticed that there were more posts in the RadAsm forum, why is that?

BlackVortex, does that mean that there are if then else if statements in other versions of asm such as jwasm and when you say it is worth it does that mean that it takes longer to code with go but it goes faster in the end?  Also is masm better at doing anything?

[BlackVortex]

Assembly doesn't really have these higher level constructs like if/elseif, but you can use them in masm, they're somewhat like macros. They get replaced with asm commands.

In GoAsm you have to do all the compares and conditional jumps manually. I see that you are new to asm, so maybe you should start with masm.

And there isn't any speed difference between assemblers because they all output exactly what you code : assembly/machine code. It's not like different C compilers that do their own optimizations and performance can be different.

With GoAsm you save time while coding, because there is less "red tape" except that you lose time due to the lack of runtime conditionals. It's a trade-off (for me anyway)

Bottom line, I think you should start with RadAsm and masm. If you don't care about syntax (colour) highlighting, maybe you should use hutch's QEditor, included with the masm32 package, there is a new version of QEditor posted yesterday, replace the older one if you're gonna use that.

[hutch--]

Alley,

Both EasyCode and RadAsm are good tools that will get a lot of code up for you in a hurry but somewhere along the line if you are going to write asm code you will need to learn the low level stuff to take advantage of its power and flexibility. It is actually useful to understand how basic windows are constructed and how you adjust them to do what you require so if you want to learn using an IDE you will have to make the effort to get below the automated interface capacity to see how it works.

Probably MASM and either IDE will do the job, it just depends on what interface you want to learn with.

[supercoollee]

......
there is a new version of QEditor posted yesterday, replace the older one if you're gonna use that.

there is a new version? where's it?

[BlackVortex]

......
there is a new version of QEditor posted yesterday, replace the older one if you're gonna use that.

there is a new version? where's it?

http://www.masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=13959.0

[Randall Hyde]

Hi I was looking to find a good visual ide and version of asm to learn.

So far easy code / go asm looks relatively good, although I don't want to waste my time learning the wrong versions, am I on the right path?

Easy Code and GoAsm or MASM is a great way to go if you want to learn how to write GUI-based applications under Windows. Sure, at some point or another you'll probably run into a wall with respect to developing GUI apps with a tool like Easy Code, but you can pick up the pieces of the Win32 API as you need them when you run into such limitations.

Now I'm assuming that you already know some assembly language and you're wanting to tackle writing Win32 apps in assembly. If you're just trying to learn assembly language, I'd suggest sticking with console applications until you master the basics of assembly language programming. Adding in the complexity of learning Win32 programming at the same time you're learning assembly can be a bit overwhelming.

If you are a beginner, you might want to take a look at "The Art of Assembly Language" and HLA on Webster at http://webster.cs.ucr.edu.

Cheers,
Randy Hyde