In my most humble opinion, I think, at least for the vast majority of programmers/students, learning Assembly programming is still an essential component of the whole learning experience. Maybe we may not actually use any of it anytime, but the paradigm of Assembly programming is such that I believe it makes us better programmers, especially regarding program size, quality and efficiency. This is a valid argument because there aren't any resources to waste in this domain unlike the severely unschooled and spoilt programmers that abound today who wouldn't think twice about writing a sloppy piece of code which just "works" but could eat up an indecent amount of memory and disk space, not to mention processor cycles. Like Eric S. Raymond mentions in one of his essays, a language is worth learning only if it teaches us to think in a different manner. Lisp is one such language. Assembly programming is one even better as an example. And I think the best way to make students learn and appreciate programming is to start them off with Assembly programming in a "practical" way immediately through hands-on projects and continuing with the theoretical aspects of it in due course of time and not the other way around! I still remember the dry sessions on the architecture, command formats - including every possible permutation of the subcomponents and wondering why this is all so fussy and wasn't it supposed to be fun? Only when I got my own x86 simulator on my PC and started writing programs did I realise that I was right and it was a hell load of fun! That is the way to learn. First unlearn whatever you have been taught in school and then re-educate yourself. Believe me, this is way more fun than anything you could ever imagine!
- Timmy Jose.
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In my most humble opinion, I think, at least for the vast majority of programmers/students, learning Assembly programming is still an essential component of the whole learning experience. Maybe we may not actually use any of it anytime, but the paradigm of Assembly programming is such that I believe it makes us better programmers, especially regarding program size, quality and efficiency. This is a valid argument because there aren't any resources to waste in this domain unlike the severely unschooled and spoilt programmers that abound today who wouldn't think twice about writing a sloppy piece of code which just "works" but could eat up an indecent amount of memory and disk space, not to mention processor cycles. Like Eric S. Raymond mentions in one of his essays, a language is worth learning only if it teaches us to think in a different manner. Lisp is one such language. Assembly programming is one even better as an example. And I think the best way to make students learn and appreciate programming is to start them off with Assembly programming in a "practical" way immediately through hands-on projects and continuing with the theoretical aspects of it in due course of time and not the other way around! I still remember the dry sessions on the architecture, command formats - including every possible permutation of the subcomponents and wondering why this is all so fussy and wasn't it supposed to be fun? Only when I got my own x86 simulator on my PC and started writing programs did I realise that I was right and it was a hell load of fun! That is the way to learn. First unlearn whatever you have been taught in school and then re-educate yourself. Believe me, this is way more fun than anything you could ever imagine! - Timmy Jose.