On Mar 6, 12:47*am, Jon Elson wrote:

Unless he wants to know how computers REALLY work, avoid assembly language.

Jon

There are still a couple more layers below assembly language.
An easy step down is machine language. The next step down is
understanding instruction decode. But only worthwhile if you are
going to design computers or work on an antique that you can single
step through an instruction.

I am a little surprised no one has mentioned Forth.

I think that Knuth's books are great for understanding computer
programming at close to the lowest level. But " Software Engineering
Economics" by Barry Boehm would probably be far more worthwhile to
read if he is going to be involved with creating systems that use
computers.

Dan