That tutorial has never seen any serious editing, just like fasm manual.

This would be the appropriate approach if I was writing about how the assembler itself is constructed or a detailed technical guide to one specific implementation (like fasm 1). But that tutorial was aimed at people that may have know very little about programming and need a progressive introduction. The feedback I got perhaps was biased, but I know that at least for some readers this was the right approach. And of course in case of any writing there always is a problem with people that are not in the target audience that the author had in mind.

Nowadays I would prefer to use fasm g as the main tool for demonstrations. For x86 ones I could perhaps take the approach of taking samples that would assemble with both the old fasm or the fasm g after selecting the right headers. It could be nice to already have fasm 2 for such purpose, but I really have no other good reason to start such a big project right now.

Ten years later I'm even more convinced that learning about some old computer architecture is the best way to introduce oneself to the machine languages, because there are so many added complexity layers made by later extensions and modern operating systems. Since now all the old machines, including DOS ones, need to be emulated, I could in fact choose something even simpler for the start, like an 8-bit personal computer from the 80s. I also think that learning about many different architectures is a good thing, because one then learns more about the "essence" of the programming in machine languages and it is easier to continue on one's own. When you already know several varied CPU architectures and instruction sets, teaching yourself a new one with only technical specs in sight no longer poses a serious problem.

You did not, however, refer to the thing that interested me: did it help you understand something? You may have not been the target audience, as you might have already known everything that was written there, but since you considered yourself a good measure in this area, I am interested in your experience.

Tomasz

It's quite off my expectations about the direction of the book you are planning. I was expecting a more practical approach on 32-/64-bit architecture. Down to 16-bit / 8-bit "essence" sounds theoretical to me. But anyway, you are the boss.

Here's what I understand from Chapter 2 (I am trying to imagine myself a noob);

You are trying to start off with the smallest unit and going up to process multiple of them via interrupts and assembly instructions and finally a string. Here's my points;

1) I get to print the "Hello World" to complete my initiation ritual (most likely I come fresh from attending a HLL course, so "hello world" is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for me).

2) Most likely I won't understand many of those concepts like MOV, int 21 that you are trying to explain in there but you should at least make the effort to "calm" your readers that these things will make sense later and that these things you are explaining are just an introductory material. You need to provide a clear direction to your readers, because if it was me reading your Chapter 2 some years ago, I'll extremely bothered by these things like "memory", label assignments, etc. Nope, I've never heard those before. Can I go back to Java please? Are you telling me about C's pointer? Where's the variable? Where's the int? What loop are you talking about? register who?

That's the kind of questions I've had when I was a noob. But if u can give me a clear direction and help me "calm" then I will read on

fasmnewbie: It sounds as though you are suggesting a tutorial. A manual would be a different thing. You can, of course, have both in the same document but one needs to recognise that they have a different purpose and would be written in a different way.

revo, my initial answer was different, but since the site been too slow, I can't put them through and had to repost over and over. Now it's a lot different than my original post.

I wouldn't have as many issues with twitter as do with Facebook, but tweeting is so difficult to grasp for myself. Regardless, I will attempt to get by in any format that FAsm presents itself.

As the results have shown, Twitter is not a good choice in these circles. But I'm still considering starting some kind of fasm-centric technical blog.

Well, I also registered an account in Twitter. In order to get my own opinion. Will post when I have it. .

So, do you have any impression?
As I see it, it gathers people with various areas of expertise (apparently it is popular among journalists), but the assembly language is at least under-represented there.
Though there are some small discoveries: https://twitter.com/solardiz/status/803425686824349697

The reason why I considered this medium is that I thought posting some quick little texts about curiosities related to assembly could be easier for me to do regularly compared to writing a full-length articles. But any such small snippets do require some prior knowledge of the topic and it makes little sense when there is no audience at least slightly familiar with the subject.

Well I don't know. Twitter is good for quick announcements, but in order to reach bigger auditory, one needs to be very active. Approximately 2..3 posts a day is the minimal amount in order to collect enough followers.

Posting only when you have something new to say is useless.

Hehe, quite. And posting when you have nothing to say is useful? Yes, sounds like a good plan to me.

Although it quite possibly describes half of my post here. Oops, how embarrassing.

Hey, there's a new idea: Twitter-like network with LaTeX rendering.
http://aperiodical.com/2017/05/we-want-your-best-proofinatoot-on-mathstodon-xyz/

The few ones that follow me perhaps already know, but I put out some first tweets today. While writing my new tutorials on file formats I keep finding small curiosities that are at the boundary or outside of the scope of tutorial itself, and I decided that Twitter could be a good place to share such findings while working on a "more serious" text.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, this is the place: https://twitter.com/grysztar

Tomasz, your writing style is already pretty clear and concise. You could start writing the book as a github repository and any contributor who feels able to improve grammar or syntax without changing the general idea may help.
That way you remain with sole authorship and the collaborators will forfeit any future economical gains as a contribution to fasm itself.