I think you all are too flip to the OP. His question may not be practical but it's a good question.



Yes, magical click we program in strings etc. But the machine has never head of a string and has no idea what one is. They are ALL software constructs and a lot of intelligence has been put into making the software look as if the machine knows all about those constructs.



It's no longer practical to learn opcodes and assembler level program. But I can say that the byproduct of playing with these things would be invaluable. Before I learn to program almost forty years ago, I did hardware design as a graduate student. I built and designed hardware adders and multipliers so I knew machines to their core and because of that, I've always had a good grasp of what the machine has to do as it executes my code. I think anyone experienced on assemler will be a better programmer for it BUT... there just isn't time enough and world.



I've recently finished the job hunting process and from the interviews what i can tell is that employers appreciate ,Net programmers BUT they are also getting tired of their "out of touchness" with machines in general. I can by threads I've read here of the years that most people here do not have much of an idea about how things works. That kind of knowledge is receeding and I think that's really sad.