What type of applications/projects can I create using Assembly Language?

Question

I am in my third semester of my university. I hardly know anything about writing assembly languages: I just used MASM and wrote mov and add eax,var1 sorts of instructions.

Can we create programs in Assembly Language similar to what we can do in C/C++?

Can you please recommend any sample projects that have been built using Assembly?

Answer 1

You can write any kind of application in assembler. The primary difference between it and other languages such as C (and what is likely confusing you) is that Assembler is extremely low level. It takes many, many instructions in assembly to do what can easily be done in a single line of code in C. This is, in essence, why languages such as C were created; to make writing programs quicker and easier since they can do in 1 line what it takes many, many assembly instructions to do. You also have to understand a lot about how the computer "thinks" to write an assembly program.

The big up-side to assembly is that it is just flat out fast. C and other languages have to make assumptions about what you are trying to do to save you time. In assembly, you can avoid all of the extra overhead that comes from those assumptions, which makes your program very, very fast.

It is well worth learning some assembler in college as it gives you a very big insight into how the computer is "thinking" and what benefits C and other languages are really providing for you.

Answer 2

Since your computer always ends up running machine instructions in the end, you can write any application in any language. "Any language" of course includes assembly language.

WriteNow is a good example of a relatively complicated application written in assembly language (68k in this case).

Answer 3

Steve Gibson writes almost all (if not all) of his utilities in Assembler.

He even has a "starter kit" for writing Windows apps in Assembler.