There has always been the age old question of whether Assembly Language is any form is still relevant in this day and age. The answer to this question is a resounding yes. There are several necessary applications for Assembly Language today as I will explain below. So keep reading.

Many software developers today have shunned the importance of learning x86 Assembly Language with the belief that it is no longer relevant to their needs as they would never require while coding computer programs. Who can blame today’s Software Developers. With the buzz that is all going around about High level programming languages and companies putting a lot of emphasis on productivity then it makes total sense to see the need to resists any thoughts that about programming using x86 Assembly Language.

A Case Against Assembly Language.

It is a true fact today that programming in Assembly is not for the faint or heart programmers as that is a skill reserved for the advanced programmers. Maybe so as you would need to be a seasoned programming guru to churn out code in x86 Assembly Language that is far better optimized faster than what your compiler can produce today. As it was said, you need to know Assembly Language to be able to produce fast code, but with the power available in today’s computers, speed optimization using Assembly Language is not a hard sought after skill nowadays. Before we look at any of the so called negative traits about Assemble Language, lets take a look at what exactly x86 Assembly Language is useful for.

Common Uses For Assembly Language

There are specific areas in the computer industry that you may not easily escape from the idea that you have to have some well versed knowledge of Assembly Language.

With knowledge and understanding of Assembly Language you can learn how Operating Systems work at low level operations such as interrupts, virtual memory, processor specific routines. Another important part of the Operating System that makes use of x86 Assembly Language is the Bootloader which gives you full access to the hardware. With that you can branch out into VGA programming and working directly with memory and other stuff like that.

Operating System, Kernel and Driver Development

This brings me right into the kernel development and driver development. The kernel is the core of the Operating System and it does not get more low level that. This is where you will have low level optimizations for your CPU, disk storage and file Systems and so on.

With driver development you are right in the heart of causing your Operating System understand and talk to the hardware that is attached to your computer and passing this vital information in abstracted form to the software that runs on the Operating System and needs to leverage the capabilities of a particular hardware device.

Compiler Development

Compilers basic function is to take those high level programs you as the Software developer have written and translate them into machine language in the process applying all the necessary optimizations based on the CPU type and so on. Well, for a Compiler to do this someone has got to write it. The language used to develop compilers and debuggers is Assembly Language. This is an area where your knowledge of Assembly Language will definitely be appreciated.

Embedded Device Programming and Firmware

It is hard to talk about hardware without mentioning Embedded devices. These range from anything from your mobile phone, to portable calculator, your digital wrist watch, you name it? Its probably an embedded device. Anyway, as is the case with most embedded devices, you are programming directly onto the hardware and your program is going to be stored on a Read Only Memory (ROM). In many cases this is a skill for those with knowledge in programming using Assembly Language.

With technology changes, this notion that Assembly language is the defacto language to program on embedded devices is slowly taking a shift as languages like C and C++ are well established in that field. Today you even have set top boxes coming with high level languages like Python under the hood.

All this talking about embedded devices brings me to the place Assembly language is still thriving. A lot of embedded devices today come with the software no longer store on ROM chips but they are stored in memory that can be flashed. If you have skills in Assembly Language you would be up to the challenge to be able to update or patch firmware programs for selected manufacturers devices without relying on their in-house Software Developers to do it.

Game Development and Game Engines

Yes, a lot of games today are developed using high level languages and with Game Engines like Blender you do not need to know any low level languages to produce high performance 3D games. However; this is not what I am talking about. There still lies that fact that whatever way you design you next 3D accelerated game, there is the issue of the 3D Game Engine.

These game Engines have code within them to give the Game Engines much needed performance boosts by optimizing for speed, memory usage and special effects. Most of these features are hardware accelerated by the GPU in the Graphics cards and that is where the knowledge of Assembly Language comes in handy. Optimizing for speed is also necessary as nobody wants to play a game that requires lightning movement of crafts, cars and people and which drags like an old beat up horse wagon.

Debugging

Debugging is a crucial procedure in the development cycle and depending on which language you are developing your software in you, may need to come to terms with the fact that you may be required to do some low level debugging of your code. This is especially relevant to software developers working with C and C++ compilers. I do not want to talk too much here but move right in and discuss on of my favorite topics… reverse engineering.

Reverse Engineering

Reverse Engineering requires a solid knowledge of Assembly Language and the combined use of Disassemblers and debuggers to walk through compiled code. With the knowledge of Assembly Language you can understand and edit and reverse compiled programs. This noble yet not so noble skill can help you to be able to:

• Reverse Engineer hidden API’s in libraries
• Engineer advanced game and software hacks using Code Caves, Function Hooking, DLL Injection and more
• Understand the various protection schemes and authentication methods used by Software Applications
• Reversal of unpublished or unknown file formats and program code to read this format for interoperability purposes
• Develop emulators for various systems such as embedded devices and obsolete game systems and porting them to new platforms
• Understand how a well-known program achieves particular tasks
• Reverse viruses, worms, trojans, malware ad other malicious programs to see how and what damage they do and be able to counter their roles

Conclusion

So there you have it. Even though Assembly Language may seem to have lost it’s purpose today, the fact is that it has not really done so. There are plenty of industry specifics that require the knowledge of Assemble Language and that will not change in the foreseeable future. So I can confidently urge you to pick up those books, brush up your Assembly Language skills get a good Assembler and/or disassemble and ope your horizons to a new world.