I think you really are taking your own knowledge for granted. My sense in working with green programmers over the years is that the ones who never did assembly

I think you really are taking your own knowledge for granted. My sense in working with green programmers over the years is that the ones who never did assembly never have a feel for how everything fits together. They have real trouble understanding implementation details that matter to their day-to-day work. That's not to say you couldn't learn lisp first and assembly later. But that seems like the hard way to me.