Available Now: The Big Blue Assembler Book

My new assembler book is available in paperback now on Amazon. A hardback version will appear shortly. This is an introductory text. After chapters covering the z Series architecture, the book is organized into topics that are covered in an order that I worked out over 40 years of teaching assembler to students and professional programmers.

Here are some of the chapter topics:

  • Character Data
  • Zoned Decimal and Packed Decimal
  • Binary Data
  • DSECTs
  • Locate and Move Mode I/O
  • Subprograms
  • Bit processing
  • Exotic Instructions

Book Features:

  • Each of the 12 Chapters begins with a newly written introduction to a topic followed by a list of the instructions that are required to master it. Each chapter ends with detailed discussions of each instruction and one or more programming assignments.
  • The book has 5 Appendices
  • I’ve added 18 programming assignments designed to turn you into an assembler programmer. Each programming assignment is limited in scope but targets the fundamental skills you need to become an accomplished assembler programmer.
  • The book has 393 Pages.

I’ve always given away my teaching materials on this site. I’ll continue to do that because it makes me happy to know that someone out there finds the information helpful. Much of the information in the book is available on the website, including the preliminary chapters of the book. What’s available in the book that you might not find on the site is an organization of topics that makes the material accessible, some newly written introductions to various topics, and a collection of programming assignments that lead to programming mastery. You will also have a book you can hold.

I love books. I still have a copy of Programming Assembler Language by Peter Abel – the book I sweated my way through (on my own) some 40 years ago when I was trying to learn assembly language. I hope you will buy this new book and enjoy using it.

11 Comments

Filed under IBM Mainframe Assembler

11 responses to “Available Now: The Big Blue Assembler Book

  1. Prabal Kumar saha

    David can we expect this book to be available in Amazon India.

  2. John

    Old programmer but new to HLASM. I’ve appreciated your online material and with gratitude just purchased book.

  3. Robert Hedrick

    I was an IBM mainframe assembler guru over 50 years ago. What do you think of this book as a refresher? (I am thinking of this as more of a hobby than anything else.) Also, you mention programming assignments. Is there a way to run these assignments, affordably, for those of us who don’t have access to mainframes anymore?

    • Hi Robert, I think the book will work perfectly as an introduction to assembler programming. The first chapter had some suggestions for getting mainframe access which is easier now, thanks to IBM. Google IBM z Explore for possibilities. What a great hobby!

  4. Aditya Srivastava

    Hi David,

    This is showing as not available on Amazon India. Please let me know by when it will be made available.

    Thanks

  5. Mchael

    Great book
    Is there a way to get the answers for the end of the chapters to check,

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