<story><title>X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary</title><url>https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/interactive-x86-bootloader-tutorial</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tvmalsv</author><text>When I was about 14 I was enthralled with programming my new Commodore 64, first in BASIC, then 6510 assembly.  I had the opportunity to accompany my mother to a one-day class on programming.  Being just an intro on the subject, I was well ahead of what they would be discussing, but thought it would interesting to talk to some adults that were also into programming.&lt;p&gt;I was talking to a couple of guys about what I had been doing on my C=64, and when I mentioned the assembly stuff I was writing, one of them said, &amp;quot;How can you possibly write anything with only three registers?!&amp;quot; (just the accumulator and x&amp;#x2F;y registers).  I was wondering what the big deal was since that was the only architecture I had known at that point.  Every game and utility I had were only using three registers, so it was already proven to me that three were &amp;quot;enough&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s funny how you can just adapt and work with whatever is available, and that becomes your norm.  Especially when you don&amp;#x27;t even realize there are other options out there.&lt;p&gt;Those were the days!</text></comment>
<story><title>X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary</title><url>https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/interactive-x86-bootloader-tutorial</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ChrisSD</author><text>I wonder if the history of x86 is holding us back in a big way. It started out being close to the metal but now it&amp;#x27;s an abstraction that can mislead you if you think processors are literally working the way x86 assembly describes.&lt;p&gt;And surely the whole spectre issue could be lessened if we could be less reliant on CPUs having to guess what to keep in cache, which code paths are most likely, etc?</text></comment>