What is Assembly Language? | Advantages and Disadvantages
- Assembly language is a language which allows instruction & storage location to be represented by letters & symbols, instead of number.
- A program written in an assembly language is called assembly language programor symbolic program.
- Assembly language was introduced in 1952.
- Machine language was tedious to code and errors were expected to arise in bulk.
- To solve these problems mnemonic codes and symbolic addresses were developed.
- It allows using alphanumeric mnemonic codes instead of numeric code for the instructions in instruction set. For example using ADD instead of 1110 or 14 to add.
- The storage locations are to be represented in the form of alphanumeric addresses instead of numeric address.
- Format of assembly language is similar to machine language:
- MNEMONIC CODE
- SYMBOLIC ADDRESS
Example of Assembly language instruction:
- This instruction adds value of NUM1 to the AX (Accumulator Register).
- The symbolic language made program writing so much easier for the Programmers but it must be translated into machine code before being used for operation.
- The translation is actually done by a special translating program.
Assembler
- Assembler is a special program (translator) which translates symbolic operationcodes into machine codes, and symbolic address is addressed into an actual machine address.
Assembly Language Advantage :-
- Easier to use, code and understand.
- Easier to correct error.
- Easier to modify.
- No worry about addresses.
- Easily relocatable.
- Efficiency of machine language.
- Can use Macros (Macro is a bunch of instruction referred as a single name)
Assembly Language Disadvantage :-
- Machine depended.
- Programs have to be translated before execution.
- Translation of programs takes up time.
- Knowledge of hardware is required.
- Additional storage area needed for the source programs and object code.
- Examples of Assembly Language Microsoft Assembly Language (MASM), Turbo Assembler
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