Why use Assembler?
There's a very good reason for using assembly language - it's fast!!
What about other languages?
Compiled C/C++ is pretty fast, and intelligent optimizing compilers can produce some pretty nifty code, but for fairly simple operations, you find that the compiled code is just not as fast as assembler.
Languages like Visual Basic or Delphi are meant as RAD (Rapid Application Development) languages, with no real focus on speed. Sure, you can write some fairly fast code, but there's so much of a general overhead that they cannot compete with C/C++ on most aspects, let along assembler!
Writing in Assembly Language
In order to write in assembly language, you need a compiler. It so happens that Visual C++ 6 has a build in compiler, and in order to access it, you use the keyword __asm and encapsulate your assembler in braces.