Assembly Courses

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Frequently asked questions about Assembly

What is assembly?

An assembly (or assembler) language is the name given to any low-level programming language of which the instruction set has a high level of equivalence with its target hardware architecture’s machine code. Because of this high degree of correspondence, each assembly language is designed for a specific architecture, and sometimes, a specific operating system.

These languages have many features in common, including binary arithmetic, memory allocation, stack processing, character set encoding, and interrupt processing. This proximity with the processor and memory architecture makes assembly languages helpful to understand how computers operate deeply, so they are still taught in computer science, computer engineering, and electronic engineering programs.

What is assembly used for?

Assembly languages close equivalence to machine code make them crucial to write device drivers and boot loaders, reverse engineering, and systems with limited high-level language support such as control systems and sensors.

Assembly languages allow for a level of hardware control that is not possible with high-level languages. Hence, they are often used where such control is desired for performance or safety reasons, such as in simulations, aeronautical, and medical systems.

How long does it take to learn assembly

Assembly languages are hard to learn, code, and debug compared to high-level languages and require some knowledge of its target hardware architecture. Basic assembly can be learned in around 3 months, but to become able to write performant assembly code for any architecture might take several more months. Knowledge of other assembly languages most certainly will shorten this time.

What are the prerequisites for learning assembly?

Before starting to learn an assembly language, it’s recommended to study basic computer architecture and how microprocessors operate. Other important concepts are binary arithmetic, memory allocation, stack processing, character encoding, and interruptions. Students usually start learning the x86 assembly language for the x86 class processors.