ARCHIVED: What are assembly languages?

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An assembly language is a low-level computer language whose instructions correspond directly to the machine language instructions of a specific processor type. In assembly, human-readable mnemonics replace the binary numbers of the machine language. Because each processor type's instruction set is unique, assembly languages are necessarily different among processor types.

In the early days of computing, almost everyone programmed in assembly. It was far easier to work with than any machine language, but still gave the programmer direct access to the CPU. However, as compilers became more efficient, higher-level languages like COBOL and C began to supplant assembly. Though assembly offers a great deal of flexibility and control, programs written in it cannot easily be transported to a different processor architecture. Also, in most high-level languages, each command can correspond to many processor instructions, allowing a programmer to write a program with fewer lines of code. Still, assembly is often the best choice for programs that must interact closely with a computer's hardware.

For information on learning assembly language programming, visit:

  http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/

For more information, consult the following newsgroups:

  alt.lang.asm
  comp.lang.asm370
  comp.lang.asm.x86