Assembly Language

Assembly Language is much easier to program in than Machine Language:

• Addresses are filled in by assembler: makes it easy to insert or remove code.

• Mnemonic codes for operations, e.g. ADD.

• Bit fields are handled by assembler.

However, it still is fairly difficult to use:

• One-to-one translation: one output instruction per source line.
  • Programmers write a fixed (small: 8 to 16) number of lines of code per day, independent of language.
  • A programmer costs $2 per minute, $1000 per day!
• Minimal error checking.