Hello, Assembly! Retrocoding the World's Smallest Windows App in x86 ASM

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Dave builds the World's Smallest Windows application live in x86 assembly using only a text editor and the command line to assemble the program using the Microsoft MASM assembler.
Whether you're a professional programmer or just curious about how assembly language works, what makes it different from machine language, and why it can be faster and smaller than C you won't want to miss it! Take your Windows Programming to the next level. Or the previous level, depending on how you look at it!
Link to Mug:
daves-garage-store.creator-sp...
Link to Code:
pastebin.com/Pmvr4r1S
Thanks in part to a suggestion by 'SonicMouse' that I merge linker sections, the current binary size is 1488 bytes... and yes, it runs exactly the same.
0:00 Start
1:31 Assembly Language vs Machine Language
2:24 Machine Language Monitors
3:22 Hello, Windows!
5:10 Dave's Garage Mug
5:30 Task Manager Enamel Pins
6:04 Editor Sequence Start
10:15 Includes, Libs, Constants, Data
12:00 Main Entry
13:30 ShowWindow
15:11 WinMain
17:10 WindowClass
21:37 WndProc
26:15 Command Line
28:08 Running the App
28:30 Closing Thoughts
Environment: Windows 10 2H02, MacOS 11.2.2
GNU Nano Editor
Microsoft MASM SDK
PS: For anyone keeping score, two things are certain: (a) it can always be smaller, and I'm down to 1488 bytes now, and (b) Steve Gibson has likely forgotten as much about x86 assembly programming as I know :-). Thanks for the recent shoutout on the podcast!
I realize you can make a much smaller app by simply calling MessageBox, but that's why I outlined what I deem to be the "minimum functionality". SonicMouse has come the closest so far at 1776!

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26 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 2 тыс.

@CFSworks 3 года назад

Fun fact: Roller Coaster Tycoon was written in assembly. There was just a little bit of C code to glue the game into the Win32 API. To date, it's the only assembly program that I know which *deliberately* contains crashing. :)

@das_murks 2 года назад

The predecessor Transport Tycoon (Deluxe) was also coded in Assembly by Chris Sawyer alone.

@bradley1995 2 года назад

@@das_murks what a mad man

@damienretro4416 Год назад

RCT was a very well-made game. RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic from 2016 is a great re-release for modern systems btw.

@IlliaZhdanov Год назад

Yeah...

@greg5095 Год назад

@@damienretro4416rollercoaster Tycoon 2 with openrct2 is a better option

@maxinator80ify 3 года назад

7:06 Dave just casually flexing his typing speed :D

@Thristle 3 года назад

The flex starts at the video title where he wrote "assembly"

@SteveJones172pilot 3 года назад

Even in fast mode, that clicky keyboard is a very distinct sound.. I would bet it's an original IBM model M or a close cousin.. the sound still makes me jealous and wish I still had my original AT keyboard.

@emilianoruizcarletti9381 3 года назад

@@SteveJones172pilot I do have a model M and trust me it's not that one. Sounds like modern tactile switches.

@nickwallette6201 3 года назад

I refuse to believe he wrote this in one pass, fixed "typos", then compiled it and got a working EXE file on the first try. That's impossible!

@fotofillholland 3 года назад

I confused typing noises for ASMR video for a second there.

@aarondewindt 3 года назад

"As you know I wrote the Windows task manager." - That quote made me click the Subscribe button, you're one of my personal heros I never knew I had.

@markmorton2519 3 года назад

Unfortunately, one of my favorite programs :) - I just subbed for the same reason

@sophiacristina 3 года назад

@@markmorton2519 Mine too, especially with my 4gb ram in modern days... *cries*

@paulmichaelfreedman8334 2 года назад

@@markmorton2519 I prefer Process Explorer, although in 10 it has improved significantly.

@mfaizsyahmi 2 года назад

The best bragging right to ever exist for humankind!

@kavinunethsarakoswattage3516 2 года назад

@@sophiacristina me too. But not because I only have 4GB RAM, but because I have only 2GB

@tristynspies8284 3 года назад

Been programming for 3 years, it's amazing how Dave shows you what true mastery looks like while remaining incredible humble. Makes you think about what it really means to BE a programmer. You sir are an inspiring.

@GeeTrieste 2 года назад

Yeah he's humble . . . but soo humble as to humblebrag !

@slickstretch6391 Год назад

an aspiring what?

@gregoryshields4258 Год назад

@@slickstretch6391 My thoughts exactly!

@nkazimulojudgement3583 Год назад

@@gregoryshields4258 aspiring hardcore programmer

@lazymass Год назад

@@GeeTriestehe has everything he needs to do exactly that 🤓

@paulveitch 3 года назад

It's only low enough level if you've hand stitched it into rope memory as they did on the apollo flight computer. All these fancy text editors, pah!

@DavesGarage 3 года назад

With Covid I couldn't find any old grandmas to do my wire wrapping for me :-)

@bokkenka 3 года назад

Pah! You with your fancy electricity... Why don't you try cutting brass gears by hand like they did with the Antikythera machine?

@williambrasky3891 3 года назад

@@bokkenka With your fancy machines, bah! Acquire an orphan, force it to be your computer.

@bknesheim 3 года назад

@@williambrasky3891 You us women for that type of work.

@sundhaug92 3 года назад

@@DavesGarage You could make your own mask-rom though

@KVzism 3 года назад

Gosh, this channel is a gem

@bensonprice4027 3 года назад

I couldn't agree more

@kamurashev 3 года назад

+1 no words more.

@sameerhussain620 3 года назад

indeed it is

@kialim 3 года назад

I'm glad it appeared on my RU-vid recommendations. Subscribed and turned on notifications!

@lxhon 3 года назад

When I wrote some assembly code in the early 90s I wouldn't have imagined that one day I'd be seeing someone's screen with 753,488,695,296 bytes of free space next to a 7,292 bytes assembly code. Also: insane assembly coding skills displayed in the 21st century.

@tetraquark2402 2 года назад

It's amazing how far we've gone.

@mycelia_ow 2 года назад

@@tetraquark2402 it's amazing how far we'll go 😱

@alanhat5252 2 года назад

@@tetraquark2402 amazing how much space we've wasted :-(

@gregdaweson4657 2 года назад

@@alanhat5252 this

@BigHeavyB Год назад

@@alanhat5252 It's amazing how much space is out there!! Which is only in the dimensions that we know of... Mind boggling to think of how much is actually there just that we don't perceive it as being there as space! 🤯🤓

@TimLesher 2 года назад

Watching Dave livecode is as relaxing as watching Bob Ross paint. I haven't done Win32 programming in over a decade, but this brought back some great memories.

@user-zq8bt6hv9k 7 месяцев назад

except it's not live coding

@ParalyticAngel 6 месяцев назад

Exactly the feelings while I was watching this video.^^ Dave is the Bob Ross of coding lectures.^^ 😉😉😉😉

@unixux 5 месяцев назад

Come on, raw win32 was an exercise in self-mutilation only comparable to raw x/motif … hmm, I’m seeing a pattern here, or rather a … motif ?

@TimLesher 5 месяцев назад

@@unixux it was a breath of fresh air compared to Win16. SS != DS and your pointer just fangandoed into File Manager's gall bladder.

@Upgradeo8 3 года назад

From buying MS-DOS in a Retail Box, to watching the creation of the World’s Smallest Windows App, what a time to be alive!

@DavesGarage 3 года назад

Ha... I feel rare and old because I put MS-DOS *into* the box. I worked on it!

@synthoelectro 3 года назад

@@DavesGarage Thank you, because you made my Heretic gaming days, epic.

@TechLord79 3 года назад

Haha, ask me, I surely needn't tell - from 8-bit pixel graphics in 320x200 to software-rasterized vector line graphics to the first textured 3D after gouraud (looking at you, TIE Fighter) - to now graphics cards that do not only do global illumination in real-time but can also do raytracing, in real-time and hardware! The past 30+ years have been a hell of a ride! Though youngster would probably look at me like "old fart syndrome" XDDD

@bbowling4979 3 года назад

@@DavesGarage So it's all your fault? :). Seriously though thanks for all your great work over the years and helping make today possible!

@frutt5k 2 года назад

Getting MS-DOS 'for free' yet buying DR-DOS in the States (I live in Europe) was an adventure of its own. "Programmers paradise" was the nearest shop for me.... At 5000 miles distance.

@billstrader4326 3 года назад

I also grew up in the '80s but I was in Louisiana. As you might expect, things were not great for a computer nerd during those days. I had my Commodore 64, banging out BASIC scripts, but I lacked resources or a mentor that could take me to the next level. My guidance counselors, who didn't understand computers, didn't encourage me to go down that path for a career. I literally thought you could be a scientist or work in a store. Retail is what I ended up doing for 10 years, though I was always building my own PCs. I finally broke into the IT support business and never looked back. Still can't code very well though. I wish I had focused on it more when I was young. So if you are a young person, or a parent of one, and your child shows an inclination to learn programming, by all means support them and try to encourage them to learn as much as they can.

@tinchote 3 года назад

Argentina and TRS-80 (Models I and III) for me; not mine, for some mysterious reason they allowed me to use them in a retail shop. Luckily there was some documentation for the API calls for the TRS-DOS, and it had a debugger that allowed you to to step-by-step and basic disassembling. With that and a book on Z80 I ended up reverse-engineering the operating system when I was 14 years old. Good times.

@cyborgedude 3 года назад

It's never too late I learned assymbly recently and still learning.

@DavesGarage 3 года назад

Great to hear you finally found your calling!

@Nick-lx4fo 3 года назад

@ozone o3 Java is a standard, but they're only teaching OOP

@Nick-lx4fo 3 года назад

@ozone o3 Yes, schools and universities should teach C as a standard, even some ASM to cover lower topics

@martysh1226 2 года назад

Even for a modern C++ programmer, this gives a lot of insight to how programming was in the early 90s/late 80s. The commenting work is also very good! Learned some stuff I never knew about Windows.

@herrbonk3635 7 месяцев назад

I don't really get what he says though. Sounds like he's swallowing half of most words. And he is so C-centric (and also windows centric) that it hurts.

@martysh1226 7 месяцев назад

@@herrbonk3635 well... why would he be talking about Mac / Linux in a video about Windows?

@herrbonk3635 7 месяцев назад

@@martysh1226 Well, Linux is even more C-centric. The old Windows API structures were originally defined in Pascal in the mid 1980s, largely taken from Xerox (very much like the first Lisa/Mac systems that were also written in Pascal). That's why we still use "PASCAL" calls on the ABI-level when writing Win32 code in C/C++ (although renamed STDCALL today, iirc). However, I did this in the 1990s without thinking much in either C or Pascal. I though in terms of assembly plain and simple.

@SkarTisu Год назад

Fascinating content, and Dave’s typing sounds like white noise since it’s so fast. That’s decades of time spent at a keyboard on display. Thanks for creating this!

@herrbonk3635 7 месяцев назад

His speech is the same to me, a fast weak noise. His phrases are hard to decipher for an outsider.

@Hossimo 3 года назад

Love the Steve Gibson call-out.

@pezia 3 года назад

This makes people appreciate 4k demoscene intros even more.

@RiversJ 3 года назад

That it does though they measure by source code size i believe not the executable, but i could be wrong.

@pezia 3 года назад

@@RiversJ Yes, the restriction is on the binary, not the source code.

@RiversJ 3 года назад

@@pezia Thanks for correcting me!

@jonaslund9724 3 года назад

Indeed,.. if you're at 3k when doing a 4k intro you're starting to cut into the musicians part of the space so better have all graphics and effects working at that point :D , honestly though this stuff he writes would probably be far smaller if he used the crinkler linker instead.

@emmanueloverrated 2 года назад

You're a machine Dave. I've coding for 15 years and I can't still code that fast... impressive.

@TheNameOfJesus 11 месяцев назад

Indeed, he is a machine. For a while I assumed he sped up the video, (there were some suspicious camera cuts, such as 22:30) but nope, he really does type code that fast. It looks impossible. I had to LOL several times. But he could have sped up his typing by 2% if he learned the keystroke for "delete previous word" rather than hitting the backspace character multiple times in a row.

@cyberwaves 11 месяцев назад

I don't know but it looks pre recorded coding rather than live coding. The text cursor stops as he turns around to speak and also the blinking speed of that text cursor is fast (Like 2x - 3x or so). Also when he exit the nano editor, the directory is changed. I might be wrong on all these but yeah I noticed that.

@TheNameOfJesus 11 месяцев назад

@@cyberwaves I hear ya. Maybe someone with OCD can slow down the video and analyze the keystrokes, comparing them with what actually appears on screen.

@JustAnotherBuckyLover 11 месяцев назад

@@TheNameOfJesus Did you really just use OCD as a synonym for "doing something detailed"? See, THIS is why people get annoyed at people just throwing around legitimately destructive mental health issues like OCD and lifelong, disabling neurodevelopmental diagnoses for fun.

@TheNameOfJesus 11 месяцев назад

@@JustAnotherBuckyLover You are absolutely right; using a real disease as a humorous metaphor for fun is a real cancer on society. Sorry.

@le9038 2 года назад

It is actually scary to see this video and think "oh, looks like he is just speeding it up a bit." But then you look at the webcam and realize he is really typing this fast. This man would dominate typeracer

@BlownMacTruck 2 года назад

It’s fast but it’s hardly uncommon.

@judgegroovyman 2 года назад

13:42 Based on the speed of the video here it looks like most of the video is actually sped up a bit but it’s all no less impressive and this video and channel are awesome.

@achtsekundenfurz7876 2 года назад

I too think that it's sped up. The audio filter gives the keyboard an incredibly cheap sound. Dave is most probably a "real kayboard" user. No cheap membrane KBs, but a mechanical ones, or at least one with high-end membrane switches. Still impressive, tho.

@danytoob Год назад

@@achtsekundenfurz7876 It's real time. If you look at the RGB lighting in the background and compare it's speed during typing with Dave's explanations the light motion is the same. Snappy digit man.

@carriersignal Год назад

@@achtsekundenfurz7876 It is sped up. I love Dave's videos, and he is brilliant and quick I'm certain, but the typing is in fact too fast to be realistic if you look at it. Besides the proof is at 16:56 for anyone who doubts this. At 17:03 it resumes warp drive. He probably put that in there to see if anyone would catch it! I give the guy full props. I'll bet he was good with practical jokes around the office in his day. His videos are great!

@StringerNews1 3 года назад

Health nut: "I ran a 4K yesterday." Dave: "Oh, what did it do? Health nut: wha?

@schulmastery 3 года назад

I emailed Dave the other day about the Windows Message Pump, and he replied within 2 hours. This channel is awesome!

@chrisjeppesen2993 3 года назад

I love to watch a master at work, machinist, electritians, carpet layers, roofers ect. Most of this is so far over my head. the peak of my programing was a basic program to calculate the length of a bicycle spoke, took me a week. I got clear through this and hold you in awe!

@larswillsen 4 месяца назад

I coded assembly since I was a kid .. now 61 and being cool when I meet coders .. the respect fpr us oldies is huge hehe :) (x86 / 8088)

@rby_ 3 года назад

I love the soothing piano music in the background

@DavesGarage 3 года назад

Not too loud? Trying to make sure it's additive and not annoying!

@cromulence 3 года назад

@@DavesGarage Nope, sounds well mixed to me!

@jackgerberuae 3 года назад

Perfect backdrop, agree.

@valdisblack1541 3 года назад

@@DavesGarage maybe, 10% lower will be better

@jaigupta2770 3 года назад

@@valdisblack1541 Nah its perfect as it is right now.

@KoMaHu3aM 3 года назад

keeping those algorithms happy...

@littlegoobie 3 года назад

I remember a pretty "big" collection of assembly widgets that didn't do much but were very amusing. The zip was found on most software repositories and it was out there to show what you could do with some seriously small bits of code. This was right before the big software bloat era.

@wasekasi 2 года назад

Wow, I really enjoy this channel and learning so much from you Dave. This was the best Assembly 101 short course I ever been in.

@peregrinesantos7483 3 года назад

Assembly is still the language I love. I am now at a point I am trying to learn higher level language. I use my programs to run motors in a factory.

@science_trip 3 года назад

also for me ❤️

@joell9319 3 года назад

As a frontend web developer, watching this makes me want to go home and rethink my life.

@amciaapple1654 3 года назад

I know what you mean. Having coded in ASM half of my life and experiencing the freedom, performance and lack of restrictions, after several minutes of of developing a web frontend I start swearing, cursing profiously and pounding my fist on the keyboard. Just yesterday, I became livid when I was writing a simple HTML5 upload widget, when it turned out that it is possible to select files or folders and upload them ...but it is NOT POSSIBLE to select BOTH files and folders and upload them. Who makes this shit up!

@verica4b 3 года назад

same. i'm still at university so i have no job yet but that really makes me think if IT it the thing for me. dont get me wrong i dont want to do anything else... but man... my brain isnt smart enough and its a shame

@__vyre 18 дней назад

@@amciaapple1654The realest thing I’ve read in a while, although I do most of my programming in C rather than ASM.

@michaelbauers8800 3 года назад

I have been a programming since this guy the 1970s ( I was maybe 14 when I first wrote some code,) and watching this guy bang out assembler code like he was typing an email is humbling :)

@vince77Z 3 года назад

I never clicked a video faster in my life

@doccolorado 3 года назад

Loved this! Brought back memories of my machine language work in 8080 in the mid-'70s. I couldn't afford an "OS" after building the IMSAI, so a friend gave me a copy of his Altair basic. I wrote a machine language program to search for the input instructions, as the IMSAI could be loaded from the front panel, find the input/output commands, and then I wrote a jump to my input/output to my devices (Altair basic was loaded with my homemade "Tarbell" tape interface). When I finally acquired an 'assembler' for the 8080 I thought I had died and gone to heaven! The best program I ever wrote on the IMSAI/8080 was a "BAUDOT to ASCII" converter so I could use ASCII on ham radio RTTY. (Today ASCII is ok on ham radio, but not back then! ) - And to think we had 1K boards back then plugged into our S-100 bus! Fun Stuff! BTW< who else do you know who started their career with Western Union as a teletype tech and finished (retired) with Cisco Systems !!

@philnelson2364 Год назад

How I wanted an altair in 1975. Looked like those movie computers till I discovered a "computer store" by accident. The owner convinced me to get a SWTPC6800 with two buttons ON-OFF / RESET instead of flipping switches just to read a keyboard, to type code to read a cassette tape program etc. The swtpc6800 used a "BIOS" called MIKBUG which had code to read a serial keyboard, display to a serial monitor, load and save a program from and to a serial cassette tape machine, enter an address and type machine code in hex. I thought "who needs blisters on their fingers" suffered by many an altair user.

@MrEengstrom77 3 года назад

Thanks Dave this was a great trip down memory lane. I still have my 1991 MASM reference book on my shelf above my desk. Loved when books were less than 200 pages and fully described an instruction set and tool.

@CTCTraining1 3 года назад

Great job Dave ... anything made using assembly language coding is a labour of love. Keep going ... 100k subs will be with you very soon!

@Lzanocco 3 года назад

I’m to old to code like Dave...I’d be happy to be able to type half as fast. Great channel Dave...don’t stop.

@xXFastD3athXx 3 года назад

There's nothing more satisfying than building something from scratch and seeing it work! Thanks Dave!

@riy0h 2 года назад

Thanks for this. Growing up with DOS, then Windows, I really appreciate your unique perspective. Love the channel!

@soliderarmatang5664 2 года назад

I've watched a few of your videos and I'm so happy you made this channel and put time and effort into it. I'm a few years into my career as a soft dev and I would've loved to have someone like you as my mentor, unfortunately I'm 40 years too late :) so these videos are a perfect blast from the past and very educational. Thank you! and keep adding stories to your videos, always enjoy listening to those!

@doncapo732 3 года назад

Watching Dave's videos is always such a treat. You have fun and learn along the way. Love this channel, thank you!

@Borsting89 3 года назад

The wild wild west in coding inspired from a time way back when programmers and CPU`s spoke the same language.

@techrazor3280 3 года назад

Those were the days,,,,, 🙄

@wasd____ 3 года назад

I did my Master's in computer science, graduating in 2020, and I had to do some pretty extensive assembly language programming for both of the computer architecture classes I had to take. The plot twist, though: neither of them was x86 assembly. One was a toy processor that only exists as a virtual machine, and the other was RISC V. It was more to understand how CPUs work and what your C (or whatever) code ultimately becomes, rather than because we were really expected to program assembly in the real world.

@MrBobtorious 3 года назад

This is such a trip down nostalgia lane. Thanks for doing this videos Dave, especially for us old schoolers!

@garyrobinson8991 Год назад

Mesmerizing….! Nice that I understand the code from what I used in college several decades ago ! Many thanks, Dave !

@krabbenarmy8495 3 года назад

Im doing an education as Application Developer specialized on application development and im always impressed when someone writes in Assembly or still uses "old" languages. Keep it up!

@stonedhackerman 3 года назад

it's rare to see such quality content thisese days, and it's even more awesome he speaks about things we today think of as the dark magic of compilers and frameworks and dont care about. keep this awesome content coming

@stargazersfield 2 года назад

Just found this channel. I have to say this now in my top 5 favorite channels to view. I see a flight full of downloaded Dave's videos. Well done sir. Glad to see we old nerds are still makin' it happen. This is also a great stroll down memory lane to coding in the 80's. Cheers

@danielsolomon6227 Месяц назад

I worked with MASM assembly back in 2013. I got really good at it too, but I don't remember a single command today. Dave, you're amazing.

@helter2K10 3 года назад

Just found your channel Dave - this is gold! Love it - keep up the great work :) cheers from Brisbane, Australia

@funposting8912 3 года назад

I had to do two double-takes when I read the title, first thinking something must be wrong, as I was sure I’d seen this video a week ago, and then confirming I actually read the title correctly. I thought your previous video was unbelievable enough, I was shocked you could go so low in windows, having to manage so much yourself, so to turn around and do the same things in ASM, I’m speechless. It’s truly amazing to see an entire program written this way, it feels so alien to anything I’ve seen before (and in a fifth the time it takes me to get a 6502 spitting out data through a serial connector no less)! You never fail to amaze, best of all is that you explain things as you go in a way that even I can follow along with, that’s saying something.

@dinohunter7176 3 года назад

The speed and precision of writing the words is impressive, also about the asm code I'm glad I found this channel. Thanks.

@lupinthird Год назад

I just want to say how happy I am that I stumbled onto Dave's Garage. His friendly cool persona is a breath of fresh air from a lot of other over-the-top YT personalities. I just like to listen to his videos while I'm working on coding. It's like having a good friend in the room at all times. Thanks for everything you do, Dave, I appreciate your content more than you will ever know. Keep up the good work!

@chrismcdonnell7448 3 года назад

When I was in high school in the early 90s, one of my friends was writing programs in assembly. I thought I was nerdy until he started doing this. LOL. He would have gone far in life if he hadn't self deleted 2 days before graduation. He was a good friend and I still think about him to this day 30 years later.

@964tractorboy 3 года назад

I didn't understand until the end. That's tough to deal with; at any age.

@randominternetuser5123 3 года назад

Damn.

@grantcivyt 3 года назад

What was his name?

@964tractorboy 3 года назад

I would respectfully suggest that remains private.

@rockrl98 3 года назад

Big oof, just the way this world is.

@NickHermans 3 года назад

"are you sitting comfortably?" *Corrects contortionist position slightly*

@pianniello 10 месяцев назад

I love this channel so much. Even though its not necessarily things I'm applying every single day to my work, any and all little details that I learn make my life easier down the line and on top of that you're a great presenter.

@philipgairson2420 2 года назад

As always, great video and thank you for the trip back to the 80's with my assembly language reference card in my pocket, pentel pencil at the ready (0.9mm) and my trusty HP15C calculator. I never thought I would wish for those days of yesteryear but here I am......fondly missing them.

@dougalplummer4021 10 месяцев назад

You make that look so easy, the flood of memories from my windows 2.X days reminded me that nothing was easy back then. You had to really work for performance. Great demonstration of an ancient art, definitely a "Bob Ross" moment.

@ckohen 3 года назад

I absolutely love these videos. I know there's an infinitesimally small chance that what I learned from this video will be used directly, but its still great knowledge. Learning low level information on how to interact with the native APIs is something you don't see very often, and I'm enjoying it a ton. I will admit, these videos strike a perfect balance between description and achieving an outcome, while I don't always understand perfectly whats going on, I understand enough of it to make sense of what I don't and you reach the goal in 1 video! That's impressive. Anyways, see you next time!

@matthewlandry1352 3 года назад

Gem 💎 of a channel I love when pros explain code as they type. Keep them coming!

@stephenhalliwell4720 9 месяцев назад

Brings me back to my days in TAFE, learning to program OMRON PLCs in assembly with a hand held controller. The screen resembled a basic calculator with 3 rows. The younger generation will never understand our struggles😂.

@juvenal1228 3 года назад

A significant portion of the 4k file size is just image section alignment. If you use a linker which allows you to cut that out, you can get your program down to 1,640 bytes without changing a single byte of the source file. Here is the commands I used: \masm32\bin\ml.exe /c HelloAssembly.asm \masm32\bin\polink.exe /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS /ALIGN:4 HelloAssembly.obj Of that 1,640 bytes, 456 are the DOS Header, DOS stub, NT Headers, and COFF section headers. You can shrink these, but its not as trivial as shrinking the section alignment.

@CoDEmanX47 2 года назад

Can you share more insight about shrinking these headers?

@achtsekundenfurz7876 2 года назад

You could . . . -- make the DOS program just quit without a message if the exe is run on a DOS system -- remove COFF info (it's debug data) -- initialize ALL data (if the uninitialized data are only a few bytes, the extra distinction might use more bytes than simply setting those data to 00000000) -- use test eax,eax instead of cmp eax,0 (save 3 bytes, because the 0 is a 32-bit constant in the code segment) -- call standard APIs via ordinal where standardized: some APIs have long names, but the ordinals are 16-bit numbers IIRC, so instead of referencing a string of ~15 bytes, you provide a single word (or DWORD at worst) number to select te subroutine you want (not sure if that optimization is 100% legal tho) And there are definitely some smaller Windows exes; there's a 4k demoscene for contemporary Windows and even a *1k* competition on many demoparties. BUT those are hardly _full featured_ Windows apps. They merely roll a gfx demo and quit. Still VERY impressive. Google _youtube rgba elevated_ for a 4k compo winner.

@cowasakiElectronics 3 года назад

Its quite funny what you actually remember. We are of a similar age and I wrote assembly language for the Amstrad CPC and Acorn computers. I still remember that calling &BB5A prints the character who's code is in the accumulator BUT I can't remember what I had for breakfast .........

@jeremiahlyleseditor437 3 года назад

Call 0a7fH Prints the character code in the accumulator on the Trs-80 Models I, II, III & IV. Maybe their color computer as well but that one I never used.

@cowasakiElectronics 3 года назад

@@jeremiahlyleseditor437 The problem with modern computers is that you can't know it all whereas with all machines you could know most of it

@ahafeel Месяц назад

Videos like these remind how far we have come in the world of computing

@kittentikkamasala69 Год назад

I'm glad I'm not the only one that hand-wrote assembly. I started learning Z80 assembler at the age of 11 on an Amstrad CPC and couldn't afford an assembler so ended up writing all my code in assembly and assembling it to machine code by hand and poking it in to memory from a BASIC program. Later, when I got an old 8088 based PC I wrote a Z80 cross-compiler for it in Pascal as a computer studies project. Happy, happy days!

@ezpz4akash Год назад

Commenting for reach. Thank you Dave, We love your content ❤

@stevojohn 3 года назад

I used to love that Turbo Pascal allowed inline assembly - used it when writing a texture mapping routine back in the day.

@1971merlin 3 года назад

And that you can do 32 bit asm inline by prefixing each instruction with db 066h. Joys!!

@michaelmeichtry316 3 года назад

Same here - I used Turbo Pascal inline assembly to access and display file/directory info., and perform other low-level functions. Borland was at its peak during those times.

@christopherknee5756 2 года назад

"Turbo Pascal" - I haven't heard that spoken in years! I loved my Turbo Pascal. Only generated ___.com files that were minimum 10 K long, but the Integrated Development Environment was so clean. Easy to run and and then compile.

@michaelmeichtry316 2 года назад

@@christopherknee5756 In college all I needed to write code was contained on a 3-1/2 inch floppy 💾 disk, which contained the entire Turbo Pascal Compiler and my source code/output files. No need for a Terabyte hard drive back in those simpler times! Also used the inline assembly feature to interact with the DOS-based file system and perform tricks like displaying the time in the program's execution.

@gnudarve 3 года назад

Two victories for you today Dave, that's the smallest windows app I've ever seen and the fastest I've ever hit Like and Subscribe. Congrats from an old C programmer who was also forged in the glorious and brutal 80s. :)

@CommodoreGreg 2 года назад

Very cool, Dave! Your running commentary helps clear up some of the API mystery and mystique.

@OneRedKraken 2 года назад

The algorithm finally recommended me this channel. Took long enough! Thanks for the mind blowing content!

@DerMannInDerWand 3 года назад

I am very glad I found this channel; while I program in very high level languages for my day job, this kind of stuff is what captured my imagination as a child. It's looking behind the curtain and seeing the machinery that drives the puppet show, not wasting a cycle or byte of memory that gets me. I sometimes wonder how well modern CPUs, OSes and Programs might run if more of the code we use on a daily basis was written more to the point; no JS and HTML rendering engine overheads for what ultimately are glorified IRC clients (looking at you, Slack). I just miss the focus on efficiency and the "no nonsense" approach of the olden days.

@Ho1yhe11 2 года назад

Dave needs to make an episode of himself porting reversi from windows 1.0 to windows 11 just so we all can see his thought process in such a task

@robinpage2730 10 месяцев назад

Dave needs to make a video of himself getting the assembly dump from a complete Ubuntu Linux distro on different architectures. I'd love to see what the filesystem looks like in various assembly architectures

@TheSilent333 3 года назад

It's been about 20 years since I've touched x86 ASM, and I was never a pro at it. This was so much fun to watch, and I even remembered the xor x,x vs move x,0 detail. Subscribed, and I hope to see lots more like this.

@alwynbressanelli7850 3 года назад

Wow! A double bonus. Finding this channel of Dave's and the comment posted by Steve Gibson. Thank you both for your insightful commentary and incisive programming. Sirs, I salute you!

@cballe2288 3 года назад

This video is amazing. I've written code in a dozen languages professionally for years. But I started with QBASIC, when I was 10, making pretty stuff for my mom. C# is my favorite too btw. But Assembly always intimidated me. I never thought I could learn it. It always seemed too low level. But it's not as complicated as I thought. I love how you comment each of your pertinent lines every time. This video reminds me of when I would write Windows apps in some old version of C++ so much.

@sholland42 Год назад

I remember coding in BASIC in 1980. When qbasic came out in the 90’s, I loved it, so powerful.

@NormAusSmith 3 года назад

Thanks Dave, another great video. I spent some of my early career developing in IBM 360/370 Assembly so it was very interesting for me to see the comparison.

@DavesGarage 3 года назад

Cool! I have a video on the channel of an IBM 360 in operation!

@IBITZEE 3 года назад

@@DavesGarage link please...

@DaimlerSleeveValve 3 года назад

I never managed to write 360 assembler code. The only reference source available to me (the IBM manual) carefully avoided any reference to I/O. However it did let me figure out a bit of what had happened in a core dump.

@GlennHamblin 2 года назад

Awesome Thanks Dave! You type amazingly fast!

@gabrielsilverio1192 2 года назад

I have never written or read any assembly in my life, and I still managed to understand everything you wrote here perfectly. Maybe some of the credit goes to my understanding of the Windows API calls you used, but I'm pretty sure your commentary is what really sealed the deal. Thank you for that!

@gray_merritt_shorten 3 года назад

I must say I really love seeing you use GNU nano! So many people tout the usefulness of editors like Vi/Vim etc but to be honest, sometimes the simplest of tools are the best!

@GothAlice 3 года назад

Hurts me when he doesn't have syntax coloring enabled, though. Nano is much better than most people give it credit for.

@someindianguy_99 3 года назад

@@GothAlice I agree.

@rubenschaer960 3 года назад

Assembly was still part of my apprenticeship in 2005, and we weren't allowed to progress to C until we were reasonably adept at writing simple programs for the Z80 and C51. Unfortunately, I never got to use ASM again. This Video might change that :)

@paulveitch 3 года назад

I did computer science at 17 and we spent a couple of months doing hand written binary arithmetic, not sure I ever used it, but gave me an appreciation of what's actually happening

@mmaranta785 3 года назад

I used ASM on 8048, 8051 and then PIC micros for decades before learning C.

@looneyburgmusic 3 года назад

Watching you program brought back memories of banging away at my keyboard all night long coding ASM for the 6502 and 8088. The late 70's - 80's were such an amazing time to be obsessed with computers, every day brought something new and wonderful to learn and play around with :-)

@jeremywillis3434 11 месяцев назад

This was very cool to watch and despite not knowing diddly about Assembly, I've learned quite a bit!

@benk6153 3 года назад

I had no clue you wrote task manager, you’re now officially my hero

@matthewconnor6817 3 года назад

As soon as I saw ‘A9’ instantly thought “LDA immediate mode” - if you’re of a certain age, 6502 is burnt into your synapses

@forkless 3 года назад

...and by extension 6510, that $D021 address as well even if you don't speak ML/assembler.

@Jeff-xy7fv 3 года назад

Yep! It's burnt into mine. Has been since I was 12 years old and playing around with a C64.

@wafikiri_ 3 года назад

I'm of that certain age, but 6502 is not burnt into my synapses. Why? Because I used Motorola 6802, similar but with some important differences (one of them made me waste two weeks trying to find a bug in the first and only program I wrote for 6502... that bug would not be such in 6802).

@nunyabusiness3710 3 года назад

@@Jeff-xy7fv The owner's manual for that thing is legendary. Every bit, nibble and byte accounted for in exquisite detail. The alternate characters on the keyboard, the ability to obfuscate BASIC code by changing font colors to match the background or place special backspace characters in the code. I still have mine, including my log book containing the tape counters as to where my apps are. The C64 was an incredible computer and still to this day my favorite computer EVER. Only a Raspberry Pi is as much fun to own and use.

@DevilbyMoonlight 2 года назад

this takes me way back.. I learned 68k assembly language to a good standard using a machine code monitors back in the day, I found the motorola cpu is a real joy to work with compared to the 6510 from the c64, there was no internet to speak of back then, interaction with others was done via voice over the phone or in a message base on a BBS, back then I ran a 3 node BBS which contained amongst other things a pretty active coding conference, it was the Seka assembler, that I used for a few years before DevPac came out.. comparing Seka to DevPac is like comparing the original vi to nano, but it was using Seka where I leaned concepts such as self modifying code and can remember how blown away I was at the time when I was able to see the changes while stepping through the code as it executed... good times fond memories

@davidprock904 2 года назад

I've seen you type before and was like WOW! But this time I got to type it out.. WOW , you sure can type!

@andrewwilson6240 3 года назад

Mentioning Steve Gibson was genius! Cue the whole "security now" listenership coming over and subscribing!

@nickwallette6201 3 года назад

Steve Gibson's biggest fan is Steve Gibson. ;-)

@omerkaragoz 3 года назад

I thought the video is sped up when he was coding. But no, it is in real-time. OMG :^)

@cyriljoly5912 3 года назад

Back to basic: Nano, Assembly and ... Jazz !!! thanks Dave !

@grantmills4829 3 года назад

the coding was fasinating to watch, as a non coder, but way over my head. So really loved the bloopers !

@fredericmokren9737 3 года назад

"'l'll shell out" Haven't heard anyone use that phrase is loooong time.

@clonkex 2 года назад

I honestly had no clue what it meant (other than "cough up the money") until he quit nano, and now I can guess at the meaning.

@agnag1 3 года назад

As for executables smaller than 3kb: MattKC wrote the game snake and got it down to 3.12kb; with packing he got the exe down to 1478 Bytes to store the whole game in a QR code (Video: "Can you fit a whole game into a QR Code?) And then there is the Demo scene where 1KB demos are their own category. e.g. "untraceable" by TBC

@HisVirusness 3 года назад

True; however he technically did cheat.

@ralfr5195 3 года назад

@@HisVirusness it's not cheating if it works!

@SimonBuchanNz 3 года назад

The main blocker for tiny executables is the windows loader validator. It used to be that you could squash the actual code bytes into unused fields in the new PE header, and the new PE header child overlap with the DOS header. Ah, those were the days. Now you can't get smaller than the 0x200 (IIRC) minimum section alignment so I believe the smallest exe is simply that plus a one byte RET instruction that exits with 0. You can play games with instructions overlapping your import table if you're really playing with fire for actually useful exes, though!

@PiddeBas 3 года назад

Don't forget the 512 Bytes / boot sector demo scene!

@iProgramInCpp 3 года назад

@@HisVirusness So did Dave, he used UPX too

@MrStevenDeer 3 года назад

I love this, I was a spaggetti basic nerd back in the day and these videos bring back so many memories of life before mice

@stancostin 2 года назад

As a assembly language learner myself, hearing "no include files, no version files, or manifest, or other nonsense" I subscribed the next second.

@reecenoone3113 3 года назад

I feel inadequate as a developer now. I used to think I had some knowledge of “lower level than I need” programming but I realise now that I don’t know a thing.

@bdwilcox 3 года назад

When the Oracle of Delphi told Socrates that he was the wisest man in Athens, he replied that he was the wisest man in Athens for he knows that he knows nothing.

@mathewjones2164 3 года назад

I still don't know whats happening but i can't stop watching

@cashewABCD 2 года назад

Boy if you saw my messy bloated code - I love watching an expert in their craft. Thanks!

@m4dizzle Год назад

When you absolutely KNOW assembly... nice! I had a semester on it back in school, but that was a looong time ago and I never worked in it commercially. Love these, keep it up! :)

@carlfranz6805 Год назад

Once upon a time there was a company (I believe) called 'Base Two' or maybe 'Phase Two' (I still have the disks around here somewhere). They produced an enormous library of x86 assembly macros which were really amazing, wide ranging, and simple to integrate into your own code. They were so well laid out that it actually helped with code design. I really miss coding with those. Sigh. Made x86 assembly coding fun instead of a slog.

@lepidoptera9337 Год назад

And they went out of business. The end. Well, yeah, I agree, though. A well thought out assembly library is a great tool. You also have a point about the slog. "The slog" has been created, in my opinion, by two effects: everything that is server centric requires an incredible amount of plumbing over leaky pipes (many of which contain mostly sewage and deliberately toxic substances) and everybody wants to log the movements of the little toes of the user because they are worth a billion dollars (or so the advertising industry claims). So the same business process that once could be done with 16k of assembly on an eight bit CPU now requires a GByte of frontend, middleware and backend code. Use OOP in addition and you are up to 10GBytes. :-)

@calmvolatility2787 3 года назад

Lol that background music is wonderful! Not even being sarcastic, it’s like “just relax as we do something that will cause most people nothing but misery and pain”

@Damaniel3 3 года назад

Yep - I don't normally listen to music while I code because I get easily distracted by most kinds of music, but I'd totally code to that.

@somedude5414 2 года назад

The music is a nice addition: nice genre, nice volume. Thanks for the videos, Dave!

@MrEd-qg8td 7 месяцев назад

Oh god this brings back some not so fond memories of writing for my IBM XT Segments:Offsets the 16 bit days Oh and the 8 bit days Z-80 on my TRS-80 Model 1 I like the Bloopers!

@8bitoverclocking932 3 года назад

Me: I'm gonna learn Vim because I hear I can be faster and more efficient than if I use Nano Dave: Watch me do circles around Vim users with my Nano coding

@frjustinhewlett7067 3 года назад

I love Dave's observation that xor-ing out the contents of the register is "a tad more efficient" than writing zero to it!

@shalinpather4198 2 года назад

It's a recommended practice in the x86 programming manuals from Intel and AMD: the register should be zero-initialised through the XOR operation with itself, rather than moving a zero into the register.

@ruperttoncic9926 2 года назад

This cuts out the memory fetch cycle(s) on all processors. Every little helps...

@shalinpather4198 2 года назад

@@ruperttoncic9926 Yup, optimisation is a really powerful practice that's often overlooked these days. 8088 Corruption and 8088 Domination are enough proof of this.

@ruperttoncic9926 2 года назад

@@shalinpather4198Z80 was the way forward! Back in the day... Wrote half of Space Invaders in less than 2K - I say half as I never had the time to finish it!

@shalinpather4198 2 года назад

@@ruperttoncic9926 Yup, sounds pretty cool! Less than 2K today sounds like a godly achievement.