Archive for April 12th, 2012

Learning x86/x64 Assembly Language in the Context of Windows Debugging

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

Due to many questions on recommended books to learn assembly language asked during Accelerated Windows Memory Dump Analysis training sessions we provide these references:

Windows Debugging: Practical Foundations
x64 Windows Debugging: Practical Foundations

Each book can be read independently although some platform-independent content overlaps. x64 bit book focuses on 64-bit only.

We believe these books provide all necessary motivation, context and practical foundation for other in-depth assembly language textbooks on the market.

I’m also working on the similar book for x64 Mac OS X.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Posted in Assembly Language, Books, Debugging, Training and Seminars, x64 Windows | No Comments »

C and C++ Programming Books That Made A Great Impression On Me

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

There are many lists for great books but I’d like to share the one that have a more personal touch. These books I wanted to read on the first sight and devoured them when I had an occasion.

First book that made a great impression on me was C Programming Language which I saw and read in 1987 (in Russian translation with very nice hardcover binding). There was a C implementation available on a PDP-11 clone I worked with at that time.

Another book that reinforced my better function prototype reading and pointer declarations was Expert C Programming.

I confess I had a long trouble understanding C++ long back ago despite reading The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup (reading several editions) and Effective C++ series by Scott Meyers partly because of my long practice of Win32 programming using C and partly because I didn’t understand why I needed C++ to do the same. Popular books such as C++ for Real Programmers (in Russian translation) terrified me with their complexity (although I made honest efforts to read them from cover to cover). However, when I saw and started reading the book Advanced CORBA Programming with C++ I really understood why we needed C++ and how it all worked.

After that rereading The C++ Programming Language and (More) Effective C++ books was a great pleasure.

The other part of C++, STL was greatly clarified by reading the following book in 2003 from cover to cover (at that time the first edition): The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference.

Inside the C++ Object Model book clarified C++ implementation issues and helped later with crash dump analysis of C++ programs.

I plan to continue this “Great Impression” series with other topics and also to publish a recommended reading list for C++ based on books from my personal library that started growing when I was an employee at Programming Research in 2001 - 2003:

The row of books is all about C++. Except the big thick red book about English language grammar (as I became interested in other grammars than C++) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language:

Now !ad debugger command: I’m developing a traning course Deep Down C++ with Memory Dump Analysis.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Posted in Bigraphical Details, Books, C and C++, Deep Down C++, History, Software Engineering | No Comments »