Editing Programming paradigm (section)

=== Assembly ===

[[Assembly language]] introduced mnemonics for machine instructions and [[memory address]]es. Assembly is classified as imperative and is sometimes called the [[second-generation programming language]].

In the 1960s, assembly languages were developed to support library COPY and quite sophisticated conditional macro generation and preprocessing abilities, CALL to [[subroutine]], external variables and common sections (globals), enabling significant code re-use and isolation from hardware specifics via the use of logical operators such as READ/WRITE/GET/PUT. Assembly was, and still is, used for time-critical systems and often in [[embedded system]]s as it gives the most control of what the machine does.