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I understand that. Then this is probably just a disagreement about the definition of 'Assembly'. I define Assembly as the lowest level that is user-accessible.

I understand that. Then this is probably just a disagreement about the definition of 'Assembly'. I define Assembly as the lowest level that is user-accessible. I think you would say that's a rather arbitrary division in the case of x86, when there is a sophisticated microcode language underneath it?

pjmlp 5y ago
Yes, history is full of bytecode formats at any given point have gotten hardware implementation for them. In some platforms they are even the only kind of format for executables and raw Assembly is forbidden to any userspace application, e.g. IBM i (nee AS/400) TIMI environment, where raw machine code is only available to the kernel, in the POSIX subsystem or special binaries produced via the Metal C compiler.