"Nobody programs in machine language" (was: Modern

Actually, IMHO the fact that it's often not a good idea to code in assembly language has _nothing_ to do with whether it should be taught (I think it should). Think of the other things that are taught in schools. How many people actually _need_ to learn calculus? Or even algebra for that matter. Why bother reading the classics of litterature? In fact what do you think should be taught in schools. I will agree that most programs (although not all) are better written in high level languages. Even so, I think every competant programmer and hardware deisgner should have learnt at least one machine code, and should have written at least one machine code program. It is important to understand that a program can be coded as a sequence of bytes/words, what operations are commonly available in machine code, and so on. It _will_, IMHO, make you a better programmer. Actually, I think everyone should have a go at writing microcode too. And should understnad at least one processor (however simple) to gate/ff level. I don;t claim to be a programmer, BTW, but I have written machine code and assembly language. -tony