Assembler coding saves no one's soul. It condemns them to wading around in the oil and sludge at the bottom of a sinking ship.
Comments on: https://code.likeagirl.io/how-assembly-programming-saved-my-soul-3af80b43e1f2
"If someone wants to understand how computers work, they need to learn assembly.
While it might seem that way, that is completely wrong. Computers work by moving data, progressively closer to a processor to be processed. How, that is done is irrelevant whether by explicit registers or implicit registers in stack machines.
We might have some notions of load and store instructions, but we do not need any explicit machine assembler or code to understand that.
In fact, learning to 'code' in assembler is a waste of time. Note I say 'code', because programmers should not learn coding but programming.
Programmers should learn computation, not computers. Computation is higher-level thinking.
"Everything else is just an abstraction built on top."
Don't dismiss abstraction, because abstraction is how computation works.
"Here's one reason that'll convince you in no time: you can use it to get back that damn Soul Jar you lost in Might and Magic 7."
That is a reason?
Assembler is not needed in this day and age. It persists because of lazy vendors and lack of suitable modern system languages, just 50-year-old, primitive and flawed languages.
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-use-an-assembler-and-disassemble-in-a-simple-way/answer/Ian-Joyner-1
Assembler does not help learn the important lessons about computing. Computing is about what is being processed, not how any particular computer processes it. Programming is about the contents, not the container. Programmers should think of data and operations on that data, not in terms of bits, bytes, words, and memory blocks. Assembler misleads programmers to think about the wrong things.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes"
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/edsger_dijkstra_201168
David Harel in his book 'Algorithmics' pp 6–7 says "Sometimes people ask: 'What really is computer science? Why don't we have submarine science, dishwasher science or telephone science?'" And "Terming the field 'computer science', someone once said, is like referring to surgery as 'knife science'".
Quote from Nov 2023 CACM page 21 by Sheldon Jacobson "Computer science is far more than programming and hardware. It is a way of looking at and solving problems."
"Computer science is not a science and it's not about computers."
"When some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use." Harold Abelson
"The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think."
Abelson and Sussman Preface to 1st edition of 'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs'.