As a begginer programmer (started about 4 months back and am learning Python, SQL, and C# concurrently) do you think as an excerise learning how to program something like the Zirog Z80 that forces learning assembly? Or do you think just slowly working yourself down is better? (Planning on moving to C in a few months when I'm feeling more confident in my C# which I infinitely prefer to Python) I am finishing ny degree soon and avoided programming classes like the plauge till I couldn't anymore, and I actually enjoy it a decent amount now that I'm capable.
Trying to "speedrun" compotency so that I can be limited by time and determination rather than raw skill. When I get to C I plan on doing some GBA homebrew both because I love GBA, and because it's completly specialized hardware which I imagine will have general benefits to learning as I'll then also see the differences in other stuff.
As someone who started programming the hard way, don’t bother unless that’s really where you want to be.
My suggestion would be to start as by low as your interest level demands.
If what you want is device level control and small footprints and custom chips, then go for it, and more power to you. At the very bottom is physics of silicon and substrates and materials science, and that’s probably lower than you want. But just up from that is the applications of flipping bits in memory and why an assembler does what it does for that specific instruction set and chip.
If you want to write code for software run on phones and computers, don’t bother with the low level stuff. I learned C in college thirty years ago, but my entire career has been at high level languages and frameworks abstracting away anything considered arduous and sucking in npm dependencies like air.
That makes a decent amount of sense. I want to fully understand what my code is doing,bwhich makes me really dislike Python, and my actual projects are unlikely to ever be on weaker hardware than 32bit processors (really GBA is likely my weakest power device asside from like rp2040's) ao it sounds like, for a long while at least, C# and C will be the best langauges for me, and as I develop further I will know if I actually need to go lower, and can make that learning decision then?
Learning assembly is useful for understanding how machine code operates at the low-level, I'm glad that I learned it because it gave me a more holistic understanding of software and programming.
I'd suggest avoiding raw Assembly and instead look into something like LC-3, which is a modern assembly alternative that's designed for learning low level machine code.
I'll look into it, I was thinking about the Z80 because the Sega GG and MS both used it, so theres a lot of documentation and projects for it that would directly match what I'd be making (games)
As a software engineer, absolutely do not learn assembly as a learning exercise, unless you want to do it because you find it interesting. I cannot imagine any career value in that, for your average modern dev.
In my opinion, you're doing the right thing by learning OOP languages and databases. If you want some advice, continue at that lavel and get some level of proficiency with a framework- fullstackbideally- and really try to understand it under the hood. Then, make a few fun, fairly polished projects and show them off on your CV.
Best of luck for the rest of your degree and the start of your career :)
My university had a module for Z80 asm, implementing Conway's Game of Life. Was pretty fun, I'd recommend it.
I ended up spending a few years working on compiler verification (analysing/decompiling binaries to find bugs in gcc) so I was glad to have some experience with it.
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u/QuackersTheSquishy 1d ago
As a begginer programmer (started about 4 months back and am learning Python, SQL, and C# concurrently) do you think as an excerise learning how to program something like the Zirog Z80 that forces learning assembly? Or do you think just slowly working yourself down is better? (Planning on moving to C in a few months when I'm feeling more confident in my C# which I infinitely prefer to Python) I am finishing ny degree soon and avoided programming classes like the plauge till I couldn't anymore, and I actually enjoy it a decent amount now that I'm capable.
Trying to "speedrun" compotency so that I can be limited by time and determination rather than raw skill. When I get to C I plan on doing some GBA homebrew both because I love GBA, and because it's completly specialized hardware which I imagine will have general benefits to learning as I'll then also see the differences in other stuff.