What is Assembly Language Programming?:
To overcome the limitations of machine languages, assembly language was developed. In this language, machine-level instructions are replaced by mnemonics. For example, ADD represents addition, SUB repĀresents subtraction, INC for increment, RAL for rotate left, and CMP for compare. These instructions are known as mnemonics. A program written in mnemonics is called an assembly language Programming. It is easier for a programmer to write programs in assembly language compared to those in machine language. It is also easier to understand an assembly-language program. Such programs are microprocessor-specific.
Assembly-language Program are translated to machine-level programs using a translator program known as assembler, as shown in Fig. 4.1.
Advantages of Assembly Language:
- It is easy to write.
- It is easy to understand.
- Assembly-language programs produce faster results.
- It is suitable for real-time control and industrial applications.
- It requires less computation time.
Disadvantages of assembly language compared to high-level languages are given below:
- An assembly language is microprocessor specific. Detailed knowledge of the particular microprocesĀsor is required to write a program. The programmer should know all about registers and instructions of the microprocessor.
- An assembly language program is not portable, as a program written for one microprocessor may not be used in other processors.
- Assembly-language program writing is difficult and time consuming compared to that of high-level languages.