While it might not be a good idea to write new projects in assembly language, it is certainly valuable to know a little bit about it. Developing a program in assembly can be a very time consuming process, however. That is, at least until the major compiler vendors add support for those features. As hardware manufacturers such as Intel and AMD add new features and new instructions to their processors, often times the only way to access those features is to use assembly routines. Also, code that is written in a high-level language can be compiled into assembly and "hand optimized" to squeeze every last bit of speed out of it. Assembly language is also the preferred tool, if not the only tool, for implementing some low-level tasks, such as bootloaders and low-level kernel components.Ĭode written in assembly has less overhead than code written in high-level languages, so assembly code frequently will run much faster than equivalent programs written in other languages. Since debuggers will frequently only show program code in assembly language, this provides one of many benefits for learning the language. As a result, if you wish to examine a program that is already compiled but would rather not stare at hexadecimal or binary, you will need to examine it in assembly language. Once a program has been compiled, it is difficult and at times, nearly impossible to reverse-engineer the code into its original form. With assembly, the programmer can precisely track the flow of data and execution in a program in a mostly human-readable form. So this pops up the question: why learn assembly? Assembly language is one of the closest forms of communication that humans can engage in with a computer.
#EMU8086 EXAMPLE PROJECTS SOFTWARE#
Nowadays though, entire software projects can be written without ever looking at a single line of assembly code. Assembly is among some of the oldest tools in a computer-programmer's toolbox.