What Is Assembly?

Well, assembly can be said to be the simplest programming language you are ever going to find in the world. It is so basic, so basic, that people might find it hard to write. i.e. forgetting to write an obvious command and all.

That said, assembly is the language which speaks to the CPU directly at the machine level. You can’t get a language simpler than assembly. There is no layer of extra languages between assembly and binary machine code. This is the simplest you can go.

Now assembly got its name quite obviously: a tool called an assembler takes the code you write and literally “assembles” it into raw binary instructions for the CPU to run.

Assembly uses a bunch of registers. You can think of these like cash registers which the cashier has right at the counter. It helps the cashier take and give money very fast, and helps do quick transactions and calculations on the fly.

Another thing the CPU works with is like a vault in the shop—this is your RAM (memory). When the cash register fills up, or if the register needs more funds, it goes to the vault in the back room. This is a bit slower than reaching into the drawer, but still necessary because you can’t have dozens of registers cluttering your counter!

Eventually, you will need a bank to store money permanently. You can’t store endless amounts of cash in a shop safe, can you? Think of the bank like your storage disks (SSDs, hard drives, USBs). Moving data to and from the bank is much slower than the register or the backroom safe, but it holds massive amounts and keeps it safe when the power turns off.

If you are a beginner, think of this analogy as literally what the CPU is doing, except instead of money, there is data flowing through them!