A Low-level Approach in a High-Level World

The educational value of low-level content, especially programming at machine level, has been hotly contested since the advent of higher level languages with a common view then and now being categorically dismissive (University of Teeside, 2007). Whilst acknowledging the direct importance of assembler language programming skills in the microcontroller application industry it is argued that the wider educational aspects of machine level experience in a general IT degree program such as the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) considerably aids the deeper understanding of a wide range of topics including general high level programming, operating systems, hardware etc