Summary

In this chapter, we covered the essentials of computer programming and described the universal elements that are shared between multiple CISC and RISC architectures. Then, we went through multiple assembly languages, including the ones behind Intel x86, ARM, MIPS, and others, and understood their application areas, which eventually shaped their design and structure. We also covered the fundamental basics of each of them, learned about the most important notions (such as the registers used and CPU modes supported), got an idea of how the instruction sets look, discovered what opcode formats are supported there, and explored what calling conventions are used. Finally, we went from the low-level assembly languages to their high-level representations in C or other similar languages and became familiar with a set of examples for universal blocks, such as if conditions and loops.

After reading this chapter, you should be able to read the disassembled code of different assembly...