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atoavlast Wednesday at 4:05 PM1 replyview on HN

You and the post you commented on display both a valid point. If we're talking about using assembly as a broad general purpose programming environment that would be a mess (which is precisely why it has no broad adoption). When we talk about assembly as a niché special purpose solution we would come to a different conclusion, coincidentally this is where assembly is still used today: environments where we need highly optimized code.

Your point about education is orthogonal to the point made. I agree with you that learning assembly can be a good way to teach people how computers work on a low level, but that has nothing to do with whether it is useful as a skill to learn.

As someone teaching similar things at the university level to a non-tech audience I have to always carefully wheigh how much "practically useless" lessons a typical art student can stomach. And which kind of lesson will just deter them, potentially forever.


Replies

zahlmanlast Wednesday at 5:03 PM

> I agree with you that learning assembly can be a good way to teach people how computers work on a low level, but that has nothing to do with whether it is useful as a skill to learn.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. The post I was replying to specifically discussed "learning assembly language". My entire point is that "learning assembly language" has purposes other than creating practical real-world programs in assembly.