What was the first preschool program?

What must i know before I write my first simple program in assembly?

• what must i know before I write my first simple program in assembly for a 80x86 CPU? Note: I'm not learning High Level Assembly I've been learning assembly with 'the Art of assembly' (NOT the HLA), example: http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~lockwood/class/cs306/books/artofasm/toc.html The book apparently isn't meant to be read from chapter to next chapter, etc I've read 1.data representation, 2.Boolean algebra, and most of(not finished) 3. system organization, and 4. memory layout access. Still haven't written a assembly program yet. So back to my question again, what must I know before I write a program in assembly, I want to be sure I'm on the right track, thanks.

• Answer:

  I looked at the contents of the link you shared. The book appears to be *very* thorough, and it looks like you don't actually do any useful programming until you get quite a ways down through the book - like almost halfway. I see Laboratory Exercises in each chapter - do you have those? Assembly programming is not easy; you have to understand what the computer does in order to use it, so the book appears to spend quite a bit of time showing all of that. Be patient. It's a long process. Most programmers today don't understand what their code gets translated into. Learning assembly gives you some of that insight, and I think it's very valuable. That said, I haven't done any assembly programming in at least 10 years, but it helps me write better code because I know what the computer will do with my code.