Unit 1.1 -- Why Use Assembly Language?

SILVER pages 2-6

ALR Chapter 1

Reasons For Using Assembly Language

1) There is nothing else on your machine.

2) The facilities you want are not available in a higher

language

3) The compiled code takes too long or uses too much

storage or both

4) The code was already written in Assembler Language

5) You suspect that the compiler does not work and the

only way to find out is to look at the Assembly

language output.

6) There are less things to go wrong between an Assembly

Language program and the machine

7) Debugging facilities are better in Assembly language

8) Real programmers use Assembly Language

Reasons for not using Assembly Language

1) It takes 2 to 5 times more lines to do something in

Assembler

as it does in a high level language.

Since the programmer time is proportional to the number

of lines of code, the effort to implement something is

2 to 5 times higher using Assembly Language

2) Assembly Languages are not transportable from one

machine type to another. Each machine type has its own

instruction set/assembly language

3) Harder to read for some people

4) Real computer scientists don't use assembly language

Other Reasons for Learning Assembler Language

1) Since hardware runs machine language, you won't

understand your architecture class if you don't know

this one.

2) Since compilers produce assembly language, you need

this material to take a compiler's class.

3) Many of the techniques learned here are useful in

HLL's, particularly higher level languages such as C.