Revolutionary Guide to Assembly Language (Paperback)

The design of the book is great, each chapter is divided into sections: Fundamental Knowledge, Tools, Library, Summary. This format is wonderful and looks promising, but the presentation fails to deliver. I can't say that I found nothing useful in each section, but I can say that the information I found in the entire book was not worth the price I paid for it.

The code at the end of each chapter lets you know that the people who wrote it know a lot about PC assembler, I just wish they'd have shared more of it with me in the preceeding chapter.

If I were re-writing this book, I would leave the format the same, but I would take smaller logical steps while explaining fundamentals in the Fundamental Knowledge sections, and put more example programs (lots of example programs) in the Library section and document, document, document, the example programs.

For a programmer, the index is almost worthless, for example: it doesn't have an entry for all of the assembler keywords. The book is over 900 pages long; the index is 12 pages long and is obviously not indexed by content, but by occurence. When you do find a subject you're looking for in the index, you hardly ever get what you we're expecting when you turn to the referenced page.

If you're a new to programming, this book is in no way for you.

If you already know a higher level language, then you will benefit somewhat from the book, but if you're learning assembler because you have to do some low level system programming, this book won't help much. I'd recommend getting your introduction to assembler with Tom Swan's book, Mastering Turbo Assembler and then filling out your specific needs with one of the system's programming books available for your platform.

I read a lot of technical books, and I find that frequently a book will cover the theory of a subject thoroughly, but skimp on real world examples and applications of the knowldege. Some other books are exactly the opposite. They go into detailed examples of specific applications of the technology, but fail to cover the fundamental areas well or at all. With the former type of book, you walk away with the knowledge of how things theoretically work, but your practical skills are none the richer. With the latter type of book so you may end up being an expert at installing Windows NT, but you still can't identify the principal functions of an operating system. Both types of books have their place, and if you stay in the Computer field long enough you'll probably end up needing both types of books for at least one or two areas. This book trys to cover both areas, but sadly ends up failing to adequately cover either.