Technopits

Assembly language has a pretty bad reputation. The common impression about assembly language programmers  today is that they are all hackers or misguided individuals who need enlightenment.
Here are the reasons people give for not using assembly1:
• Assembly is hard to learn.
• Assembly is hard to read and understand.
• Assembly is hard to debug.
• Assembly is hard to maintain.
• Assembly is hard to write.
• Assembly language programming is time consuming.
• Improved compiler technology has eliminated the need for assembly language.
• Today, machines are so fast that we no longer need to use assembly.
• If you need more speed, you should use a better algorithm rather than switch to assembly
language.
• Machines have so much memory today, saving space using assembly is not important.
• Assembly language is not portable.

 

 

 

 

Myths ...

Having just read the above, you’re starting to assume that assembly must be pretty bad. And that, dear friend, is eighty percent of what’s wrong with assembly language. That is, people develop some very strong misconceptions about assembly language based on what they’ve heard from friends, instructors, articles, and books. Oh, assembly language is certainly not perfect. It does
have many real faults. Those faults, however, are blown completely out of proportion by those unfamiliar with assembly language. The next time someone starts preaching about the evils of assembly language, ask, “how many years of assembly language programming experience do you have?” Of course assembly
is hard to understand if you don’t know it. It is surprising how many people are willing to speak out against assembly language based only on conversations they’ve had or articles they’ve read.

 Assembly language users also use high level languages (HLLs); assembly’s most outspoken opponents rarely use anything but HLLs. Who would you believe, an expert well versed in both types of programming languages or someone who has never taken the time to learn assembly language and develop an honest opinion of its capabilities?

 I felt that very little was gained by going on and on about these points. Nonetheless, a brief rebuttal to each of the above points is in order, if for no other reason than to keep you from thinking there isn’t a decent defense for these statements.

Now No More Myths ..........  We Will Move On  To Assembly

Cheers !!

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