spoogenet

Well I actually was just f'in with ya on that one...shoulda put a jfwy sign in that post. Big-endian and little-endian more appropriately refer to byte-order, not bit-order. I'm assuming that by "backwards" you were referring to bit-order? I guess I'm a little confused on exactly what you meant by backwards in the first place.

It sounds like you've definitely gotten yourself into quite a pile of stuff there. That you've taught yourself everything is good because that's how you really learn it all. Classes don't really teach much.

Assembly is fun but it takes a different mindset when you have to think about registers and the likes. Going from a high-level programming style to assembly can be a difficult process because of how much you need to change how you think. Equally going back from assembly, or just going from assembly in the first place, to a high level language is difficult. At least that holds true for most people, but it's definitely doable and easier for some than others.

A good place to start with learning assembly is on microcontrollers. If you really want to get into that kind of stuff, get something like a Microchip PIC microcontoller and a programmer for it and start having fun. You can get a small proto board and make it do useless crap, but once you learn enough about it you'll find that you can have some fun with them. Their architecture isn't too difficult to learn and understand, as such their assembly language isn't too difficult to learn and understan either. The thing with assembly is that to really write good code in assembly you need a deep understanding of the architecture you're working on.....hence why I recommend starting with something like a PIC.

Good luck with those projects!

b