The result is a simple methodology for describing simple abstract machines which correspond to algorithms.
Plentiful examples exist in the literature of ASMs applied to different types of algorithms.
The ASM methodology has the following desirable characteristics. One uses a specification methodology to describe a system by means of a particular syntax and associated semantics. If the semantics of the specification methodology is unclear, descriptions using the methodology may be no clearer than the original systems being described. This distinguishes ASMs from informal methodologies. Since there is no method in principle to translate from the concrete world into an abstract specification, one needs to be able to see the correspondence between specification and reality directly, by inspection.