software design

To my opinion, the merit of this book is that it gives good basic knowledge about assembler and loader. Especially, the chapter about loader is very clearly written. I think that it's better than Levin's book (Linkers and Loaders).
However, the level of information is too low. If you are under-graduate student and don't have many experience about the assembly programming, this book is helpful to raise your level in system programming. But to experienced engineer, I think it will be a disappointing book.
I'd like to recommend this book as the introductory book or the summary of assembler, link and loader, compiler, os, software engineering, and so forth.

This is a wonderful book help me clear a lot of idea.
Most of people study these tools,that is compiler,assembler,OS...and so forth, indenpendently.
But L. Beck tell you the relationship between them systematically.It is really worthy of buying the book.
It seems that there is hardly books talk about topic such as the content of the book.

This book is filled about 500 pages of such incredible verbosity that it is wonderous that anyone can come away having learned anything. The material is hopelessly outdated. This book definitely is not worth the nearly $... I wasted on it. I hate myself for the ... dollar I will receive at the college bookstore when I return it.