I learned assembly first, and it definitely affected how I approached all languages afterward. Actually, it was digital logic that I started with, building hal

I learned assembly first, and it definitely affected how I approached all languages afterward. Actually, it was digital logic that I started with, building half adders and such. From there the changeover to assembly was very natural. From there, C just made sense because it projected a very assembly like virtual machine. From then on, I'd unconsciously convert high level code to its assembly equivalent in my head. The only pitfall is that you mustn't stop profiling, because these days cache trumps cycles per operation by a very wide margin.