TOtosh·Feb 20, 2026Submission
Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language (1990)
2 points · Open discussionjagregory
abrash-zen-of-asm
CSS2014–2026
jagregory / abrash-zen-of-asm
abrash-zen-of-asm
Markdown source for Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language (1990)
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Markdown source for Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language (1990)
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
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HN mentions by year4 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-06-20 11:40:09 UTC to 2026-02-20 18:42:40 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
4 sourcesIt is now about 20 years old, but you can start with "Zen of Assembly Language" and carry on with "Graphics Programming Black Book".
https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-zen-of-asm
https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book
In I translated a simple C program to x86_64 and it was slowerNice to see this here, thanks for sharing it cmsimike.
This was a labor of love/appreciation for me a couple of years ago over a Christmas break. I went through a retro gamedev period during that break, read a few books like Masters of Doom, and found myself trying to read through the various (relatively poor quality) electronic copies of the Black Book that were floating around. Yak shaving being what it is, I spent most of my Christmas break scraping and cleaning up a few different copies to put this together so I could (more comfortably) read it on my Kindle.
FWIW, these conversions were done with an eye for preserving an interesting piece of gaming/graphics programming history, and aren't really intended to be relevant today.
I also converted the Zen of Assembly Language also by Abrash[1], but it's considerably less relevant than the
Read the rest
Black Book in general.
[1] https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-zen-of-asm
Wow... for that hardware, a 4.77MHz 8088 PC with CGA graphics and Sound Blaster audio, those stats are overwhelming:
1. Variable frame-rates up to 60 FPS.
2. Audio rates to 45kHz.
3. 16 colors through composite artifacting.
4. Simultaneous color and B&W output.
On a related note, you will probably be interested in Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language. From the "README.md":
"This is the source for an ebook version of Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language: Volume I, Knowledge, originally published in 1990. Reproduced
with blessing of Michael Abrash, converted and maintained by James Gregory. Original conversion produced by Ron Welch."
https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-zen-of-asm
In 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1