content: minus: can't be ported, difficult to debug, exercise in futility, far too much typing to get something working plus: it may have a small code, allows exact control over the hardware (except when the cpu does its OOE thing), it may be optimised for a certain cpu, might be fun to read the code to see how the dirty work is done. misunderstandings: a program written in assembly is not necessarily faster than compiled code. It can be, but "written in assembly" does not immediately mean that it's gonna be faster.