COURSE DESCRIPTION

In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer’s central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a very specific task, such as a load, a store, a jump, or an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) operation on one or more units of data in the CPU’s registers or memory. Machine code is a strictly numerical language which is designed to run as fast as possible, and may be considered as the lowest-level representation of a compiled or assembled computer program or as a primitive and hardware-dependent programming language. While it is possible to write programs directly in machine code, managing individual bits and calculating numerical addresses and constants manually is tedious and error-prone. For this reason, programs are very rarely written directly in machine code in modern contexts, but may be done for low level debugging, program patching (especially when assembler source is not available) and assembly language disassembly.