I've got a soft spot for assembly language. I learned it at age 11 or 12 to program my TI-83, and it gave me a huge head start on my computer engineering educat

I've got a soft spot for assembly language. I learned it at age 11 or 12 to program my TI-83, and it gave me a huge head start on my computer engineering education. It was challenging, yet it also made the details of what the machine was doing very explicit. Higher level languages, like C and Java, seemed impenetrable to me before learning assembly, but it opened the door to me learning them in high school. I didn't know I had Kathleen Booth to thank for laying the groundwork. RIP