I think you miss my point. I'm saying that in order to explain some of these things it's better to use a language like C that's close to the hardware and doesn

I think you miss my point. I'm saying that in order to explain some of these things it's better to use a language like C that's close to the hardware and doesn't offer them natively in order that their implementation must be exposed. Using Javascript because the language already has most of the features would just be explaining the syntax of Javascript, akin to Knuth using Python instead of MMIX and his descriptions of sort becoming an explanation of how to use Python's sort; not how it works under the covers. :-) An older example is a good book, now downloadable, by Axel-Tobias Schreiner, the German translator of K&R, etc., that implements a C preprocessor in awk that adds OO features to C, thereby explaining how a language with the features built in, e.g. C++, implements them. Objekt-orientierte Programmierung mit ANSI-C: http://www.cs.rit.edu/~ats/books/ooc.pdf http://www.cs.rit.edu/~ats/books/ooc.pdf (English translation.)