July 30, 2023

Assembly Language - choosing ARM to start with

What assembly language should a person learn first? Some advocate some 8 bit processor from yesteryear thinking that 8 bit will be simpler than 32. This just isn't true. Those old processors like the 6502 and Z80 have only a tiny handful of registers and they are all different with unique quirks. ARM on the other hand has a bunch of 32 bit registers that all act the same (for the most part). I believe this makes ARM assembly easier to learn.

Another consideration is what you can do with the knowledge you are going to gain. It is hard to claim that expertise with an 8080 processor will be terribly useful unless you are one of those people who like to tinker with historical processors. There is nothing wrong with that, mind you. What you learn about ARM will stand you in good stead for modern processors for the foreseeable future.

And something has to be said about the x86 processor. People may argue (and rightly so) that we almost all have one of these on our desktop and at our fingertips. The sad truth though is that these are ugly war-hogs at the assembly language level. I wouldn't wish them on anyone and look forward to the day when ARM or something else at least as modern and clean sweeps them aside.

So ARM it will be, at least for this tutorial. The next thing is to find some hardware ....

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org