How to parse an exe file?

Question

Programming

Good day dear comrades!
There is a program that executes algorithms according to some principle unknown to me, namely, it performs actions either according to principle A or principle B. I can’t understand which one, but it’s necessary! there was an idea to disassemble the program into source codes and look in the code, and now the question is, how can I do this and is it possible at all? if yes, then advise the tools, and share your experience.
In advance, all the best and happiness, as well as thank you!!!

Answer 1

This is called reverse engineering and, if the program is not free, it is a criminal offense.
And even if not, most likely, it will not give a visible ready-made algorithm.

Answer 2

strongly depends on what the program is written on,
but in general it is work for the debugger / disassembler

Answer 3

Of course, you can disassemble the program, but you just get instruction sets ... in general, if you are not familiar with at least assembler, have not worked with processor registers, then you are unlikely to understand something. Even if they worked, it's still not easy.

Answer 4

If the program is written in .NET, it is possible to decompile using JetBrains dotPeek.