In CS-411 we teach both SSA and parameterized blocks, with more emphasis on SSA. IMHO the main advantage is that phis are connected to their "call" sites and a

In CS-411 we teach both SSA and parameterized blocks, with more emphasis on SSA. IMHO the main advantage is that phis are connected to their "call" sites and argument values. Blocks aren't first class, there's no need to decouple the names of their inputs from the actual inputs. SSA makes those dataflow connections explicit, which is obviously superior.