I had hoped that this article wouldn’t require x86 assembly fluency to read; it really is a “port” of my prior article on x86-64 assembly. I wrote it because mobile developers, at least, probably care more about ARM64 than x86-64. Is there anything I can do to make this article similarly approachable to the x86-64 one?
Explaining things in terms of how they are unlike x86 is what makes people think that they need x86 knowledge as a pre-requisite.
The mechanics of branch-with-link can be explained without using x86 as a base. It's a call where the return address is saved in a register and code controls where and when that address is spilled to the stack, rather than it always being on the stack. This is common to several ISAs.
The explanation that sp is a "stack pointer" is like pretty much every stack-based ISA, and does not need special reference to the x86. The idea that all instructions are the same width, similarly, is common to several ISAs, and does not need special reference to only one of the architectures where it is not the case.
And operand order is not unlike x86, but rather unlike a specific assembly language for x86, for which there are alternatives.
It's approachable either way. The main reason I mentioned x86 familiarity is because you make references to your previous post as well. I'm already reasonably fluent in both x86 and arm assembly, so I may not be the best judge though
