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Assembly is indeed intimidating for novices. I agree. But I still think that newly minted programmers need to understand something about what's under the hood
by alejohausner 5y ago
Assembly is indeed intimidating for novices. I agree. But I still think that newly minted programmers need to understand something about what's under the hood of languages like python.
Maybe a full course in assembly is too much for freshmen, but they should at least understand that RAM isn't like VCR tape: you can fetch any RAM memory location in constant time, unlike with a serial storage medium like tape. And they should know some of the hardware memory addressing mechanisms that make arrays possible.
- nsonha 5y agoNo, asm is not intimidating, it's irrelevant for some people. I guess my point is not to be so close minded and arrogant as to thinking you could possibly know what is and what is not important to someone's job, and dictate how people should do things. As well as thinking there is only one true way of doing things. Again you learn how computer works in computer architecture class, you learn programming already know that, or not, if it's irrelevant to your learning goals. You don't design programming languages to teach how computer works, nor do you learn programming to learn how computer works, that makes zero sense.