How many times was masm32 SDK downloaded ?

[hfheatherfox07]

I read a post here by hutch about how people even in his University days were saying how Assembly was useless Got me thinking ....How many times was masm32 SDK downloaded ? I mean from masm32 v1 to now?
Were records kept of downloads ?
I am betting it is in the millions! Never mind the sites that still offer the older versions !

I wonder if Hutch realizes the impact that he made on the world ... So many of us love masm32 and would not be programming in Assembly with out Hutch's masm32 SDK
There was a site that showed the early version of masm ... Not fun , no includes or libs
Even tuts in winasm direct the user to download Hutch's masm32 SDK and over write the inc and lib

If we never got the chance to thank you Hutch , Thank You!
And thank you for providing a place to expend our knowledge of masm !
Lots of great members here that help


You are famous around the world hutch 

[hutch--]

Funny enough I used to keep track of it about 10 years ago and it was into the millions then but it is too much hassle to track all the different download sites so I gave up on the idea. The numbers of course include people who have downloaded a version more than once then upgraded to the later versions as they became available. Over time many people contributed to the project and I have always tried to credit those folks who helped but truly the list would be very long if it contained all of the contributors.

If I am guilty of anything its doing my best to keep the project coherent and true to its original intent, uncompromised freeware that is available to anyone at no cost that cannot be ripped off, sold or re-licensed. Over its life there have been many attempts to commercialise it, steal it, take control of it and re-licence it and this is why it has a non-negotiable licence to protect it from the sum total of sleazebags who have tried over time.

It was born through 1997 in conjunction with Iczelion, I was more up to pace with Windows architecture and API functions, he was more advanced in assembler code as I was still writing assembler that looked like old DOS crap in 1997. We released the first version in early 1998 and over time Microsoft re-released ML.EXE as part of VC and generally 32 bit assembler has taken its place in Windows programming. It is a narrow and specialised capacity but one that should be available to folks who need that capacity.

[hfheatherfox07]

Funny I have always wanted to see assembly code that looked like DOS , were you used arrows to navigate , never found a source ... I have cmd.exe using masm32 , but not DOS style.

I have only seen 2 things in Delphi that I want to be able to do with masm , that nervous text , and dxscene ( were you flip the window on its y axis to show the back) I have an idea of how to do it but not good enough to yet, I am sure some one like qWord could do it.....

Most thing for win32 PC's could be done in masm ....at least at my bigonner level I have not encountered anything that I can imagine not capable of being done in masm?
What did you mean by  "It is a narrow and specialised capacity" .... Are there things that can not be done in masm?
For example even iPhone apps are what was done with masm and PNG skining examples long ago.... If you ever download an app.api to your PC extract it like a .zip see what is inside !
They do convert the PNG to a PNG with out preview, I have the tool that does it ...

[hutch--]

Seriously you have not missed anything with DOS style assembler. In REAL[tm] DOS which was non-re-entrant and real mode addressing you ran masm 6.0 with its PWB (programmers work bench) and Codeview and if you wrote you code like the output in Codeview you could routinely shift from one to the other and know what was going on. Windows debuggers have never had the same feel to them and I confess I rarely ever use one.

MASM does core binary well and it manages the API functions with no real problems but it is a bit clumsy with specialised high level constructs and this has made COM, DirectX, DirectSound and similar messy and untidy to do in MASM as it does not have the specialised interfaces to do this stuff. There are enough people who have done these things but there seems to be no advantage in doing this high level work in MASM, usually the C/C++ folks do it a lot easier.

[Gunther]

Steve,

but all things considered: masm32 is a story of success, and only that counts.  :t

Gunther

[K_F]

...its PWB (programmers work bench) and Codeview

Ahhh!!!  PWB and Codeview :)

[Vortex]

The Masm32 package is a great success. We are grateful to Hutch.

[jj2007]

The Masm32 package is a great success. We are grateful to Hutch.

Yes :t
Occasionally he is a bit stubborn, as we all know :icon_mrgreen:, but that's exactly the qualification needed to keep such a project alive, and to maintain the high standard and high consistency that makes it different from other exercises. I have just opened a bottle of good red wine and will drink it (well, part of it) on your health, Steve :icon14:

[hutch--]

I would help you out with the bottle of red but sad to say it does not like me any longer. I just have to suffer a collection of pure malt instead. 

[hfheatherfox07]

I have to ask ,
Did something happen with historical masm32v2.zip ?
I found all versions on line 1 through 11
But 2 is gone
All I found is a link to members only that does not work

http://members.xoom.com/Iczel/files/masm32v2.zip

[hutch--]

I still keep the install source code for versions 9, 10 and 11 but I long ago ditched the source for the earlier versions. I think I have the odd earlier version floating around on a very old machine but as of version 9, I changed the entire installation and use a different technique to put it all together. I wrote version 11 from scratch as I had to test a lot more to get the install reliable on later OS versions that were not set up properly or had badly configured AV scanners and probably any further versions will e even bigger headaches to make reliable.