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First, "assembly" is not a language; it is a group of languages. For example, assembly for x86 processors is only vaguely related to assembly for embedded chips which is only vaguely related to other dialects of assembly.
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True, but when people generally speak of Assembly they are speaking of the general language (usually pinpointing to the x86 architecture).
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Second, assembly still has uses! Assembly is the easiest way I've found to take advantage of 3dNow!/SSE instructions, which are very important to modern procesors.
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Assembly always has its uses! Along with special instructions, one can use assembly to debug programs, write compact programs, optimized functions, etc.
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Third, assembly is not any faster than any other language. For example, x86 assembly can be much slower than the equivalent C code if you turn on optimizations in your compiler. It's all in how you use it.
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That is not true (at least in my opinion). Assembly is faster than many languages especially interpreted ones. Assembly is faster than php, perl, java, visual basic, shell scripts, etc.
For instance, take a fairly moderate program (with some file writing, loops, function calls, and variable storage) and write one in C and write one in Assembly. The Assembly one will be faster. Why? Because one has total control over how the program is run in assembly. Therefore, there won't be junk code thrown in by the complier. The complier might make 10 jumps in the code to do something, while the savvy assembly programmer can do the same thing in 4 jumps. For small programs (like a print Hello World!), assembly might not make such a difference, but for larger programs, assembly's speed will shine.
Of course the problem is writing the program in assembly. It will take too long!
Steve Gibson of grc.com does an awesome job of writing Assembly programs.
mikeXstudios