We’ve updated our privacy policy so that we are compliant with changing global privacy regulations and to provide you with insight into the limited ways in which we use your data. Show You can read the details below. By accepting, you agree to the updated privacy policy. Thank you! View updated privacy policy We've encountered a problem, please try again. An assembler is a program that takes basic computer instructions and converts them into a pattern of bits that the computer's processor can use to perform its basic operations. Some people call these instructions assembler language and others use the term assembly language. Here's how it works:
In the earliest computers, programmers actually wrote programs in machine code, but assembler languages or instruction sets were soon developed to speed up programming. Today, assembler programming is used only where very efficient control over processor operations is needed. It requires knowledge of a particular computer's instruction set, however. Historically, most programs have been written in "higher-level" languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, and C. These languages are easier to learn and faster to write programs with than assembler language. The program that processes the source code written in these languages is called a compiler. Like the assembler, a compiler takes higher-level language statements and reduces them to machine code. A newer idea in program preparation and portability is the concept of a virtual machine. For example, using the Java programming language, language statements are compiled into a generic form of machine language known as bytecode that can be run by a virtual machine, a kind of theoretical machine that approximates most computer operations. The bytecode can then be sent to any computer platform that has previously downloaded or built in the Java virtual machine. The virtual machine is aware of the specific instruction lengths and other particularities of the platform and ensures that the Java bytecode can run. This was last updated in November 2005 Continue Reading About assembler
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