A kind programming language that consists of human readable processor instructions (Mnemonics, as opposed to Opcodes, which would be the number representations of the same instructions). Modern assemblers do furthermore also support certain higher level features, like macros, datatypes or functions.
Also, assembly language is used to distinct the language from the program that translates into machine code. In general use, both are called assembler which leads to the need to specify in certain situations.
It should also be noted that while people often talk about assembly language in general, there is not "the" assembly language, but rather a large group of them, one reason being different processor families having different instruction sets, the other being different assembler programs supporting different features, or having different ways of providing those features.
Assembly language is what real men write their programs in!
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An academic field, basically the same thing as computer science, it's a compound word of 'Information' and 'Mathematics'. Mostly used in europe.
Informatics cover a broad spread of topics, in general it is about data storage, procession and transmission. While it is a science on it's own, it can also be viewed as a meta science much like mathematics for the process of information gathering and processing taking place in all academic fields.
Has the advantage over the term "computer science" that people don't confuse it with learning how to operate a computer.
"So uh, you study computer science?"
"It's called Informatics!"
"What's the difference?"
"Not much really, just the fact that Informatics doesn't have all too much to do with computers- just like computer science."
"Huh?"
" 'Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.'
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra"
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