In the domain I work in (firmware for digital instruments and industrial systems), knowing assembly isn't necessary for performance reasons so much as for sanit

In the domain I work in (firmware for digital instruments and industrial systems), knowing assembly isn't necessary for performance reasons so much as for sanity reasons - a lot of vendor compilers for embedded devices are incredibly flaky, and if you can't inspect the generated assembly you'll never know what the hell is going on in cases where the code doesn't behave the way you expected it to. Heck, even when I have the privilege to be treading a more well-worn path (eg. ARM/GCC), it's helpful to be able to tell what the compiler is transforming (on a less charitable day I'd say "munging") my code into.