Whats Right With Assembly Language?
An old joke goes something like this: “There are three reasons for using assembly language: speed, speed, and more speed.” Even those who absolutely hate assembly language will admit that if speed is your primary concern, assembly language is the way to go. Assembly language has several benefits: • Speed. Assembly language programs are generally the fastest programs around. • Space. Assembly language programs are often the smallest. • Capability. You can do things in assembly which are difficult or impossible in HLLs. • Knowledge. Your knowledge of assembly language will help you write better programs, even when using HLLs. Assembly language is the uncontested speed champion among programming languages. An expert assembly language programmer will almost always produce a faster program than an expert C programmer. While certain programs may not benefit much from implementation in assembly, you can speed up many programs by a factor of five or ten over their HLL counterparts by careful c
