Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!saxony!dgil
From: dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Need Assembly lang. to learn C?
Message-ID: <887@saxony.pa.reuter.COM>
Date: 31 May 91 04:16:06 GMT
References: <1991May21.175914.3681@rodan.acs.syr.edu> <1991May24.105947.3379@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Reuter:file Inc  (A Reuter Company) Palo Alto, CA
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>In article <1991May21.175914.3681@rodan.acs.syr.edu>, ldstern@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Larry Stern) writes:

>> To all: a local instructor, who teaches C, has told several of us who
>> are interested in his course that we should take an Assembly language
>> course first.  Even though his course is C in the DOS environment and
>> a knowledge of 8088/80286 would no doubt be useful, we are wondering
>> if this is really necessary.


     I recall that, the first time I attempted to read K&R (1977?), I could
not seem to get a handle on what was going on in this language.  By 1981, I
had had various levels of exposure to several assembly languages, and going
back to K&R everything seemed to fall into place.

     There are some weirdities of the DOS/80x86 world which percolate through
to minor extensions or convenient macros provided by DOS compiler vendors,
such as memory models and near/far pointers.  If you've already seen this
stuff, your C instructor won't have to review 80x86 CPU concepts in the middle
of the C course....
     Of course, programs that use these features sacrifice portability.  But
it's also true that at least half of the "how do I ...?" questions from DOS
programmers involve learning about those features; programs that don't use
them look pretty lame compared to programs that do!
                                                           Dave