i learned assembly years ago as my first language (not counting BASIC, Pascal and Fortran, which i never did anything meaningful with)...

in the early 90's it was important to know Assembly to do embedded programming, because the C compilers for embedded controllers were terribly inefficient -- and expensive if you were a student or hobbyist. the "Assembly is Better" mindset continued even into this decade.

But now the C compilers rock, and only the most specialized apps or processors would ever need such low-level programming.

so, as some one who learned on assembly, and loved all its peculiarities.... I hate to say it... stay away from Assembly if at all possible. at the very least, don't start learning to program on it, for reasons Dragon pointed out already.

do yourself a favor and learn C and learn C++... C is especially suited for microcontroller and embedded work, while C++ in particular will give you the Object-Oriented foundation on which you can expand in any other direction as needed.

dont bother with C# unless you are immediately going to go work in a Microsoft shop. Definitely do not get bogged down in some Macintosh "objective c".... no one uses Macintosh for C programming in the industry, that I've ever seen. i mean, if you want an object-oriented version of C... it's already here: it's called C++. And it's portable to any OS. Vendors reinvent the wheel because they want to lock you into their proprietary hardware or software. don't do it. if you know C++ you can easily pick up C# or "Objective-C" if the need ever arises.

if you learn C you'll always have a skill in high demand. if you learn C++ you'll have the additional benefit of understanding Object-Oriented programming, and can take that knowledge and apply it to any number of languages, such as C# and Java, and can likely get hired based on your C++ background even if you dont have the specific OO language they prefer.


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