Teaching assembler

I just received a copy of Introduction to DECsystem-10 Assembler Language Programming by Michael Singer, published in 1978 by John Wiley ISBN : 0-471-03458-4 I would like to share some excerpts from the preface which resonate with the recent (long) discussion on teaching assembler language programming : With the widespread availability of higher level languages (such as ALGOL, COBOL FORTRAN, PL/1) for computer programming, as well as packages put out by the major computer manufacturers that, almost at the touch of a button, will perform a variety of complex tasks, it is reasonable to ask why any other than a relatively small number of specialists should trouble to learn assembler language programming at all. There are good practical, theoretical and aesthetic reasons for doing so. ... In our opinion, however, the most useful function served by a knowledge of assembler language programming is to give the user a much closer awareness of how the computer works, as well as inestimably greater control over its workings, than is feasible with a higher level language. In our experience, the higher level language user who is familiar with assembler language is a more efficient - even happier - programmer than one who is not. .... The notion that assembler language programming is esoteric and inherently difficult is, in our experience, very much mistaken. On the contrary, for many people it seems to be the natural way to start off with computers. ... All computers have a great deal in common, and much of what is said here applies equally well, with only minor changes, to many other machines. ... Octal and binary numbers must be introduced, and indeed a programmer should ideally be able to think with numbers in any base. Such a facility, however, may be acquired gradually, and so in Section 1.3 we go no further than is necessary to understand what follows. At no stage do we encourage the reader to gain skill in performing calculations in various bases, or in base conversion; in our experience, once the principles are understood, the student's time is better spent in learning how to pass such drudgery to the computer. .... Those readers who want to proceed further, particularly into systems programming, will be ready after reading this book to refer to the manuals. A warning should be given that much less care goes into [the] preparation of the descriptive literature than into the machine itself and its software, and the manuals contain many obscurities and errors. -- HansP