I have lots of thoughts on assembly language. At $work I am currently working on an embedded system where I need to produce a high performance real time signal processing system. At present essentially all the code is written in C++ and the compiler does a good job of generating efficient code. But I need to have a good understanding of assembly language to satisfy myself that that is the case. There are small pieces of code that are critical to the performance of the system. I know that I can do a better job than the compiler for those bits, but at present I'm not sure I need the extra speed so I'm sticking to C++ for now.

Higher level languages (in this case C++) are generally much easier to work with and the code is easier to maintain. But, if you understand the processor well enough, assembly language can generally give a factor of two or so speed boost. None of that relates to Perl. An understanding of assembly language now is largely the domain of embedded systems designers and compiler writers. Personally I think these days there is little to be gained to help understanding higher level languages and computers by understanding assembly language. Applications are so far isolated from the processor they are running on that "understanding" what is going on at the processor level is more likely a disadvantage when using Perl and similar scripting languages than it is an advantage. It's rather like trying to understand the physiology of neurons to gain an understanding of personality - it's in there somewhere, but there are so many layers in between that there is no useful cognitive connection between the two domains.