I feel very comfortable dealing with the 32-bit PowerPC build code, but I completely lost it, trying to understand the x86 code. Could any of the other common architectures such as ARM, MIPS, Sparc, etc., be simpler than the x86 instruction set?
Well, most RISCs are very similar to each other, so if you know PPC well, then switching to ARM, MIPS or SPARC will be very fast. First I found out about SPARC, and then I was able to pick up a few minutes of MIPS and PPC.
What makes x86 so confusing is not really its assembler, but the design of the processor. People tend to depend:
push
pop
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