Anyway, I join you in your outrage about exceptions. Hiding exceptions isn’t like hiding string handling. Unless you’re dealing with Unicode-level stuff, strings just aren’t that interesting (even with Unicode it’s just a crap load of detail mostly isn’t all that interesting). Exceptions are something else entirely. There are several different ways to handle the beasts, each with its own trade-offs. A good intro to assembly might let you macro up some exception generating/handling structures, but should never, ever prevent you from learning what’s going on underneath. If the intro didn’t want to cover exceptions then they shouldn’t be in the book at all. Bah! :-)

I maintain the outrage about the higher level stuff. Particularly the exceptions.

Note, as olsner suggests, operand order isn’t universal. There are two “traditional” styles: AT&T syntax (which is what gas uses by default) and Intel syntax. AT&T syntax does indeed use a different operand order from Intel syntax.

I guess that’s what I get for commenting on the choice of dialect without knowing much assembly…

“The operands are backwards from intel’s mnemonics. Mostly. Except when they’re not.”

Well, gas also has a backwards operand order compared to Intel (except in a few instructions where they accidentally used the intel order). And then it differs between architectures of course. So in this respect you’re not much more screwed than you’d have been if you’d learnt any other kind of assembly dialect ;-)