Real Men type the opcodes for their program directly into memory (and they'd rather use toggle switches if they were still available).

Lesser Men use assembly language that other software translates into opcodes.

Normal Men use a text editor to write a file that gets translated by other software into assembly that gets translated by other software into opcodes.

Girly Men use "CAD Tools" to make pretty pictures that other software translates into text files in a high level language that gets translated by other software into assembly language that gets translated into opcodes.

(Note that I haven't been a Real Man for about 25 years, and that was on a 6502.)