• @lhamil64@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    910 months ago

    I hear people say “program in assembler” but IMO that’s wrong. I’d say you write the code in “assembly language” (or better yet, the actual architecture you’re using like “x86 assembly”) but you “assemble” it with an “assembler”. Kind of like how you could write a program in the “C language” and “compile” it with a “compiler”

    • @amki@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      0
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      A compiler and an assembler do wildly different things though. An assembler simply replaces mnemonics while a compiler transfers instructions to a whole other language.

      • @Malfeasant@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        110 months ago

        Depends on the language, really… C maps pretty closely to assembly language, it’s not as simple as one mnemonic to one machine code byte, more like tokens get mapped to sequences of machine code, a function call translates to some code that sets up a stack frame, a return tears it down…