VB_ACK

I am looking forward to a career in assembly programming, at this point in my life (age 15).

My main goal is a great salary and a stable job.

How ever, I do not know where to start.


What forms of assembly are in demand from employers? Where should I start in my assembly education?

Right now I do not seek a career in assembly programming, I want to become educated in it.

I seek the nearly infinite (I know, it doesn't make sense) accumilated wisdom of the board.

Flyguy

Assembly programming???
That's hardly done anymore, so I think it will be very hard to make a career with it.

reboot

Very little software has any assembler in it anymore. Maybe a little here and there to speed up a slow spot. Same with operating systems. There's still some in the Big Iron arena (IBM Mainframe type stuff), but it's mostly utility and administrative thingies. I wouldn't get my hopes up of a career in ASM.

orufet

Don't be discouraged from learning ASM, it is still around (and probably will be for a long while). It's just that the higher languages can do all of the work now; there's no real need for it in everyday life. I'm learning it as well, but only for the experience of doing it. I don't plan on using it a whole lot; it's not practical.

Thinker

Now this joke I get.

Waxycat

Yeah, it's not very practical for most uses and isn't used a whole lot proffessionally, but if they need it, it's harder to find someone who knows it well than someone who knows C for instance, so they'll probably pay more. I preffer it though.

VB_ACK

Where's denmeister when you need him?


I still believe Assembly had good career potential.

Where are all these hardware manufactuers getting people to write their microprocessor code?

And what about all of the electronic companies? They need microprocessors as well.

Waxycat

yeah i suppose they do so that's an exception. but there isn't alwayz a whole lot to write anyway.

orufet

Most useful code in ASM that can be written has been written, with exceptions of new technologies (not new computers, but like MP3 players, etc).

VB_ACK

Is it helpful to know anyway?

Especially if you take on a project like creating your own operating system (I know, it's madness).

Derek Stone

Well, yes. But do you have the time and dedication to be the next Linus Torvalds?

Good Luck
-CL

John

I think it is practical to know and can be an asset in certain situations. Like reboot said it can be used to speed up the slow spots, processing graphics and other things. In most cases though I would assume most of the Assembly used today other than writing device drivers would be in-line assembly with C/C++.

Orbity

Waxycat

Crazed-Lunatic, I do! But much of the information I need seems to be unfindable. For instance, to make an opperating system, the installer must be loadable from a cd or disk or something automatically from startup. How does the computer recognize when you put say a Windows disk in the drive and restart, that it's a valid OS disk, while if you put a disk that doesn't have an OS it knows that it's invalid?! Questions like these plague my abillity to ever get anything done. But VB_ACK, if you can figure any of this stuff out please tell me, because I'd be curious to know how you ever found any of this info.!

John

hmm... Have you actually looked for any of this information? A quick search on Google pulled up 65,900 results. Look HERE maybe you could figure something out after looking at THIS which is one of the first couple results on the Google search.

Maybe you should take some Hardware classes to see exactly how the boot process goes through and what happens at each step.


Orbity

Waxycat

I do take hardware classes. I took microprocessor systems 1 and 2, and they never mentioned any of that! What else could I possibly take? I haven't searched for it because I don't know what to search for, I don't know what to call it. I clicked your search for "make bootable cd" link, but it seems to be verifying what I was already under the impression of, which is that making a bootable cd just means to make a cd boot disk for Windows (which of course Windows automatically does after a couple clicks), but doesn't explain at all how it actually works or how the BIOS and ROM auto-boot program examines the disk to determine weather it's an OS or other bootable program (such as the Norton emergency rescue thing), or just some other junk program that will cause an invalid disk error.

John

Maybe you'll find THIS interesting. It is an OS written entirely in Assembly and is only 32k in size.

I'm sure if you take the time to look over the results from the above Google search you'll find what you are looking for. I know that the link I provided above brings you to a pdf file talking about the El Torito specification which is for creating bootable cds. So I then refined my search to THIS and got 1,200 results. A little bit of searching can find answers to even really difficult questions.

Regardless of wether or not a cd contains an os it becomes bootable in the same way.
Basically it doesn't matter if it's an OS a Recovery CD or anything else.

I took a few basic courses on upgrading and repairing PCs and purchased a book published by Que called Upgrading and repairing PCs and I do understand what happens during the boot process, however it is way too much to write here. I would suggest taking some similar courses, and reading that book.

I do have to say though, before you can do anything close to writing an OS in Assembly you will need to be so good at writing ASM code that you could do it in your sleep. This would be an extremely difficult process albeit not impossible, but for someone who is still taking this course, you need to do a whole lot of other stuff first.

</rambling>
Orbity

Agent

Do any of you think it would be possible to make a complete operating system with hardware. I mean also making your own motherboard and stuff. Is that possible for one person?

Waxycat

I just finnished the second course actually (and it's not his website). I can do assembly great, except that I have problems understanding protected mode and a few things like that, but they aren't a necissity yet. Other stuff? Such as what (a quick sumery would be fine, I'll probably understand the names of the ideas you're talking about, and besides that, I can look them up) Thanx for the links and stuff! Agent, you can't make an opperating system with hardware... not really anyway, technically you could make just about any kind of software inside of hardware, of course you'd still need data files to back up anything you want to save. But it wouldn't be software-upgradable, you'd have to rewire the system.

Waxycat

I just checked your link, here's a perfect example of what I meant: "El Torito" I didn't know what that was called. I had never heard of it before. How did you know what it was called? This is the predicament I often have - I can't ever search for information about anything because I don't know what it's called. There are things I've wanted information about for years that I've been unable to ever even initiate a search for. How would you suggest that I can just 'magically' know what everything interesting is called, so that I will be able to search for information about it all? Everyone else seems to be able to do that, and I'd really like to be able to!

John

Why are you in such a rush? I had heard of the El Torito spec in my upgrading and repairing pcs class. I couldn't remember the name of it and I got the answer from one of the links on the first page of the google search I gave you above. I also gave you a link to this .pdf file in on of my above posts. A little bit of time and research will go a long way.

As for ideas of things to do, write a windows notepad app with only ASM and then write an mp3 player with only ASM write an emulator for your favorite classic gaming machine, a couple plug-ins for photoshop, a device driver for a linmodem things like this. In my opinion, until you can do all of these as well as networking apps and such with nothing but assembler then you MIGHT be ready to start THINKING about an OS.

Just slow down, take your time and do the research. I first searched for "Make Bootable CD" then I read some of the information in the pages that were returned, here I found the name of the spec. Now you can search for the "El Torito CD Specification" and narrow down your search. I really don't think it is very difficult to do. As a matter of fact being a good ASM programmer is far more difficult than using google to find what you're looking for.

Orbity