Comments on: JSASM: For when you need a x86 assembler in JavaScript

By: Michael Mahemoff

Michael Mahemoff — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:33:30 +0000

Mathieu, yeah I don’t think ASM is a good choice for new programmers. Just that having an ASM platform in the browser is an easy way to get started learning about it.

To learn JS, you don’t need a text editor either, just point to a website with a JS scratchpad. JS is probably an okay language for new programmers, though others are better IMO.

By: Chris Hiester

Chris Hiester — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:29:24 +0000

Maybe it could be used for a spellchecker. The author apparently needs one, “…correcting where nesseary (and yes, there is a lot of nessecity)”.

By: Patrick Mueller

Patrick Mueller — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:10:18 +0000

More proof that JavaScript is a nice doorway to other languages. Also see: http://vistasmalltalk.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/accessing-actionscript-from-lisp/ – LISP and Smalltalk in ActionScript.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:11:06 +0000

I got you all beat. My time-of-day web service is going to make me rich!!! :)

By: drex

drex — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:01:36 +0000

The best part was the included vbs to save locally to the desktop in IE

By: Mathieu 'p01' Henri

Mathieu 'p01' Henri — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:55:48 +0000

Hum, speaking about the masses, isn’t JavaScript 1 billion times more accessible and simple to learn than Assembly ? Every computer comes with a browser and a simple text editor. Although you still have debug.com ( that let you fiddle a bit with 80×86 assembly ) on Windows boxes, I’m not sure there is such thing on Mac OS, Linux, and other alternative OS.

By: Michael Mahemoff

Michael Mahemoff — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:43:00 +0000

Like Why’s interactive Ruby shell.
http://tryruby.hobix.com/

PCs used to come with programming languages (ie BASIC) built in or shipped with the system, that’s how I and many other people here learned to program in the first place. In 2007, a modern windows install comes with gigs of bundled apps, but the tiny BASIC interpreter, which could be 50KB or less, doesn’t make the cut. For this reason, I’m glad to see these Ajaxy compilers making programming languages accessible to the masses again and hopefully they will flourish and yes I’m serious!!!

By: dankos

dankos — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:12:08 +0000

it might come very handy for secure

By: Mathieu 'p01' Henri

Mathieu 'p01' Henri — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:47:21 +0000

:) so crazy I like it.

By: Nadav

Nadav — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:55:18 +0000

And I thought April 1st was only one day long. :)

By: Tharnid

Tharnid — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:31:53 +0000

I took a class last semester where we had to use a Java ASM so I can see a use for this in the academic world regarding the fundamentals of computer science.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:46:43 +0000

I agree with mdm-adph & Joe Grossberg. This is the first that came to mind when I saw it. Seems pretty awesome.

By: Joe Grossberg

Joe Grossberg — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:02:34 +0000

“Can anyone think of practical uses?”

Yes, you can use it to learn x86 assembler without risking the hosing of your PC. It’s a terrific sandbox.

By: mdm-adph

mdm-adph — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:34:16 +0000

… I’m speechless.

Uses: Web-based Assembler Education?

By: Frank Thuerigen

Frank Thuerigen — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:51:42 +0000

Hm… this has an obvious practical use: imagine you had a library with all opcodes of all processors… one could write ASM for x86 and a server could attempt writing the MAC counterpart for it. This would be very handy for certain parts of driver development, namely those parts that only access CPU and memory. Taking this bit further: one could have a lib of ASM snippets others could use for their own programming – IÂ´d like a webservice like that.

Another possible use would be, that you can let the server simulate a CPU and run the program… x86 executables tested on a linux server… also one could use it to reengineer old code where only the .exe file exists and source code is lost.

This is very very cool.

By: Mark Birbeck

Mark Birbeck — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:28:00 +0000

The comment in the demo to the effect that ‘saving requires wscript’ is probably a clue to the purpose of this apparently ‘useless’ effort. :) The author is probably running the assembler through some kind of batch process on the desktop, outside of a browser. If the output of this process were to be an executable, then we’d have a program that was coded with assembler language, but ‘assembled’ using JavaScript. You’d have to admit that would be incredibly interesting, since the assembler would be easy to extend and customise, could be made very modular, and would probably be quite easy to understand, for programmers learning about such applications.

All speculation, of course, and hopefully the author will clarify sometime soon.

Regards,

Mark

By: ryan

ryan — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:02:36 +0000

this would have been great in my computer architecture class last semester…i can see a good educational niche for this

By: Brad Harris

Brad Harris — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:22:16 +0000

I wish I had that much free time on my hands

By: pdp

pdp — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:33:55 +0000

it might come very handy for security related projects

By: Kevin Hoang Le

Kevin Hoang Le — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:58:20 +0000

To the author: since it’s so clever of you to produce something that’s useless but cool already, you can just take a little step further by “ajaxifying” it more. What I mean is instead of forcing users to click on the “Assemble” button, just intercept each key stroke or just simply the “Enter” keystroke (end-of-line) and ran the assembler at that point.

Now, I am not suggesting that’s going to change people’s opinion about its uselessness (is that even a word?), but since this is about Ajax, and you’re already 90% there, you’re might just as well.