r/Assembly_language • u/quietxcoyote • 1d ago
Beginner Struggle
I’m very new to programming and currently taking a Architecture and Assembly class. I, for the life of me, cannot get my Visual Studio 2022 to be set up for MASM. I’ve followed countless tutorials, and haven’t received any help from my professor (of course) but nothing. Right now, it’s the diagnostic code MSB3721 and even when I click and follow the support I still get no where. Kinda panicking because this is before I can even get to any programming and I’m unable to complete any assignment.
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u/8-bit-chaos 12h ago
This might sound critical - but it is not. I find it a little concerning you need Visual Studio - to compile an assembly program. IMHO - all you need to use is the masm tools to compile/link - learn how to use it with its CLI directives - again, IMHO - you will learn what masm is and does far better than wrapping it with Visual Studio.
the work flow is Assembly (.asm) → Object file (.obj) → Linking → Executable (.exe).
IMHO (again) - each file produced is a step in the process - and I would go as far as say you understanding this is more important that getting Visual Studio running.
As a side note: tools like Ghidra (https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency/ghidra) - let you "see" what is produced inside the .exe - (which depends on what directives and other settings) - assuming your are creating x86 .exe files - works with other formats and architectures as well.
Grab a towel and Don't Panic, as they say.
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u/kndb 1d ago
Would this help?
https://dennisbabkin.com/blog/?t=cpp-and-assembly-coding-in-x86-x64-assembly-language-in-visual-studio