HLA supports all the same low-level machine instructions as other x86 assemblers. Further, HLA's high-level control structures are based on the ones found in MASM and TASM, which HLL-like features predated the arrival of HLA by several years. In HLA, low-level assembly code can be written as easily as with any other assembler by simply ignoring the HLL-control constructs. In contrast to HLLs like Pascal and C(++), HLA doesn't require inline asm statements. In HLA, HLL-like features appear to provide a learning aid for beginning assembly programmers by smoothing the learning curve, with the assumption that they will discontinue the use of those statements once they master the low-level instruction set. In practice, many experienced programmers continue to use HLL-like statements in HLA, MASM, and TASM, long after mastering the low-level instruction set, but this is usually done to improve readability.