HLA is a radical step forward in teaching assembly language. It combines the syntax of a high level lan- guage with the low-level programming capabilities of assembly language. Together with the HLA Standard Library, it makes learning and programming assembly language almost as easy as learning and programming a High Level Language like Pascal or C++. Although HLA isn't the first attempt to create a hybrid high level/low level language, nor is it even the first attempt to create an assembly language with high level lan- guage syntax, it's certainly the first complete system (with library and operating system support) that is suit- able for teaching assembly language programming.