Do Web developers Need to Know Assembly Language?
NO, web developers should not bother to learn Assembly Language, it is not directly used in web development, and no web developer writes direct Assembly code for web applications, although assembly language provides a lot of advantages in performance and speed, it is not meant for web developers.
In my third year of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, I did a few labs and projects on the Assembly language, nothing I have ever learned in Assembly has a direct application to web development.
Any full web development course or training does not include working with assembly language. Web developers work with high-level programming languages and Assembly is a low-level programming language. As a web developer, you will never write any line in assembly language, there are other types of programmers who are trained for that.
UNDERSTANDING ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE
An assembly language is a type of low-level programming language that is designed to communicate directly with a computer’s hardware. Assembly languages are designed to be readable by humans. Assembly is different from machine code which has instructions in ones and zeroes, but it is the closest we can get to the hardware without writing machine code.
Each computer has a family of processors to control different activities, each family of processors has its own set of instructions for handling various operations, and assembly language is designed for a specific family of processors. This means that each assembly language is specific to a particular computer architecture.
Assembly language is designed with a bias towards hardware programming. Depending on the linker and development environment, Assembly code can also call libraries written in C programming, and may also be called from code written in the C programming language.
Assembly language can be used to write code for operating systems, device drivers, Embedded Systems, interrupt handlers, Telecommunications systems, Control systems, Servers, microcontrollers, space probes, robots, encryption algorithms, and more.
UNDERSTANDING WEB DEVELOPMENT
Web Development on the other hand is the “work involved in developing a website for the Internet or an intranet. Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, e-commerce platforms, and social network services.”
A web developer is concerned with the front-facing side and the server-side logic on the website or application. Web developers use high-level programming languages and frameworks to achieve this.
For the client-side of the web application, Web developers use HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Other frontend frameworks and libraries such as React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, etc. are also heavily used.
On the server-side, web developers use languages and frameworks such as PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Golang, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Django, Laravel, and many others to program the server-side logic of web applications.
Web developers are also knowledgeable in the use of databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQLite, Redis, etc. Web Developers can create and use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to extend web app features and access third-party data for their web applications.
You can learn more about Becoming a Full Stack Web Developer in our article How to Become a Self-taught Web Developer (Step by Step).
It can be seen from the above that Assembly language is not needed to become a full-Stack Web developer. Web Developers work with high-level programming languages and tools while Assembly language is a low-level programming language centered mostly on hardware programming.
Assembly was designed with an orientation toward hardware programming and embedded systems, it requires less memory and execution time, and it is also good for programs that need high performance.
It is important to know that despite all the amazing things that assembly can do, you are not any less of a Web Developer if you do not know assembly, you actually don’t need assembly for web development.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, web developers do not need to learn assembly language. As a web developer, you will not use assembly language in your web development projects. Web developers work with high-level programming languages which makes it easy to write applications for the web.
You can only learn assembly language if you want to enhance your understanding of how programs interface with the operating system, processor, and Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). Otherwise, assembly language cannot be used directly to make web applications or websites.