Raspberry Pi Assembly Language RASPBIAN Beginners Kindle Edition

If I had to make one generalization about this book, it is that the choices this author made during his life were based on where they came from and little else. He chose British technologies because he is British and avoided BETTER technologies because they originated from "the colonies". What a stereotypical British attitude! I am pleased that I have a much broader background (including a formal education in computer science as well as years of electronic design) so I warn readers to take what he has to say with a grain of salt (as they say).All around, this is a pretty good book. It fills a gap that few other books address. I would have given the book 4 stars were it not for the following:There are mistakes as well as some misinformation in the book. The author resorts to hyperbole when trying to imbue a positive impression of the ARM architecture (because it is British) while glossing past its many flaws. Here is one passage I found too outlandish to take seriously: "Raspberry Pi can do many different things using a base set of instructions, and does so by getting the absolute maximum meaning out of every single one of these 1s and 0s..." This is a very false statement. The architectural constraints on all RISC processors (including ARM) mean that they have poor code-density and memory usage which are the measures of how well a processor makes use of 1's and 0's. The primary goal in the design of RISC processors is to make them easy to design and manufacture. In order for the processor to have a low gate count, encoding efficiency suffers and ease of programming goes out the window. The advent of the ARM architecture forced many a programmer to abandon the practice of using assembly language to fill in the functionality that high level languages lack. RISC processors are a lot more difficult to program in assembly than most CISC processors. Those advanced features of CISC processors that can't be accessed through high-level languages have been stripped away. I have seen newbies ask professionals questions on Internet forums about ARM assembly language only to be told that they should give up the attempt to learn assembly language altogether. This is not so much because it is a useless exercise (when using a CISC processor) but because assembly language on a RISC processor gives you the ability to reach features that are not there. Their programming models are designed for compilers and not for programmers. This is a shame but it is true.

It is easy to find good books about C# and Java. However, for many more specialized development tools it is hard to find a book that provides what a beginner needs. In many cases, a book thoroughly covers the language commands, but leaves the reader staring a a blank command line wondering "What, exactly, do I need to type to compile and run my program?" Bruce Smith's books do not fall into this trap. Smith provides not only the necessary coaching and instruction in assembly language for the Raspberry Pi's ARM processor, but also gives clear practical instructions for getting everything to work.One of the reasons I bought the book is its introduction to the ARM vector floating-point coprocessor, a topic that often gets short-shrift from authors. If I had to pick one nit with Smith's book, he fails to mention a little trap with assembling coprocessor code. Smith starts the book using the GNU assembler "as" and then moves to using gcc later in the book, which is entirely reasonable. However, some readers might like to know that if you want to assemble vector coprocessor code with "as" rather than gcc you must include the command-line parameter "-mfpu=vfpv2".Whether you are looking just to have some fun learning assembly language with your Raspberry PI or whether you view the PI as a stepping-stone to greater things ARM, Bruce Smith's book definitely belongs on your shelf.

Explains ARM assembly in a very simple manner that's easy to understand. However, I really wish that it would go into more details and have more examples for each of its chapter. Overall, it will set you in the right direction but a 2nd book is recommend with this purchase since you will probably fly through this book very quickly on your own.

An excellent introduction to assembly programming. There's a lot of typos in the book, so make sure that you download the errata (if you can - the author's site isn't working any more), but the programs are generally very easy to read and follow, and Bruce Smith's writing is, well, just wonderful. Very easy to read, and if you're wondering "What if..." something he usually comes out and says what happens on the next paragraph.

I found this book to be a great introduction to assembly. I have a pile of such books, and this is the only one I'd recommend. It's very well written from start to finish. And although this book is written in a different style than "The C Programming Language" it provides every bit as clear of details every step of the way and it doesn't waste your time. This is the assembly book I was always looking for.

I was disappointed that it did not cover printing from a view of assembly language and had to use printf for that. There is little to no reference to the the syntax format with explanations. All in all, it is a start for me in using this processor at the assembly language level. So, I give it a three star rating.

Probably one of the best assembly language books I've seen. Although I used to do some assembly language programming many years ago, this book was a very good refresher and clearly explained the Raspbian assembly language. Don't forget to go to the author's web site and pick up the errata. The web site also has links to other sites and pdfs, including a tabular chart(s) of the assembly directives. Highly recommended.

I've only given it 4 stars because, to my mind, there are rather too many errors. I know there's an 'Errata' section on the author's website, but that only helps once you've realised there's an error: the uninitiated are likely to be confused - and given that the author devotes a lot of space to explaining the basics of assembler programming, it's plain the uninitiated are the intended audience. As one who was initiated a long time ago (I first learned an assembly language in 1966), I almost inevitably found most of these explanations tedious, but I accept they're going to be very useful to a lot of people.If you want to learn about ARM assembler, this book is the obvious choice: in fact, apart from the Baking Pi course from the Cambridge University - which requires a spare computer, and probably stronger nerves - it's just about the only choice.Recommended, but beware of the errors - and if you've done any assembler programming before, be prepared to skip large chunks of the text.

You can play with the RPi for ever without using assembler, but if you do want to venture into assembly language this is a very good book to get you started. It covers the basics of registers and instruction set concisely and sufficiently fully to get you started. It covers operation of the debugger and and there is a section later on covering the GPIO interface (so how to use the RPi to drive peripherals).Could have done with a bit more clarity on the flags (there is at least one misleading statement) and there are a few errors (most of them corrected in the errata on author's web page). One program doesn't compile as printed in book (but the version downloadable from website is fine).Despite these small criticisms I found the book to be a very useful introduction to RPi (and ARM) assembly language.

Excellent little book. Uses the linux gcc toolchain rather than the riscos basic assembler, so its easy to try the examples directly under raspbian. I did a lot of X86 assembler coding at one time ( ugh! ) and had forgotten just how brilliant the ARM instruction set is. Very easy to memorise and get coding. Shows how to interface assembler to C as well. Would thoroughly recommend this to anyone looking to learn ARM assembly language

This is the same book as the ARM Assembly language of the same author, with fewer chapters and 1 chapter for the GPIO (which did not work for me).Not very practical and as the title says. It is for beginners, which means that you don't take too much advantage of the assembly language.It is good for a first approach.

Last time I tried assembly programming was on the Z80A wanted to try something new so I bought the E version for Kindle, sat down in front of my Raspberry PI3 and flollowed the program in the book and the first one I typed in worked first time,Iwas well impressed. the book is laid out in easy to follow chapters and introduces new concepts gradually and is easy to follow. I would reccomend this book