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remysharp.com · @remysharp.com@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner 6/10

Pretty gentle and sensible introduction to assembly and machine code. I'm pretty familiar with 8-bit assembly already but this helped to lay some decent foundations.<br/><br/>The pace is a bit weird though. It starts and continues for a good deal of the book as uber simple, almost erring on the side of being patronising with it's weird 16 fingered alien - but it does just about work.<br/><br/>But then, as the later chapters go on, the author suddenly switches from nice and gentle to "obviously", "just" and "simple" and it feels a bit like you're tossed into the deep end with no orientation. I found I had to re-read seemingly short and "obvious" chapters.<br/><br/>Frustratingly the chapters on audio and graphics were exceptionally short only referring to the `out` ports which is technically accurate but didn't offer much advice.<br/><br/>Then around 40% of the book is used to build out a Frogger clone which I'll admit I skimmed.<br/><br/>The appendix is very useful though, with a complete index of opcode to pneumonic and visa versa which I've used a number of times already.

#book

Published 2026-08-01 11:10 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere