Why Learn Programming this way?

There are two unconventional things I'm doing with these videos. Firstly, teaching assembly language to beginners, or anyone at all, is generally frowned on. Secondly, after just a couple of introductory videos, we get straight into serious programming. I'll explain why I think this is a good approach, at least for some learners.

Assembly Language

Here are my responses to some common complaints about assembly language:

• It's complicated
  
  Hardly. Assembly language is the native language of the silicon chip at the heart of the computer. Being built into the silicon means it has been pared down to be as simple as possible. The right way to describe this language is primitive. My claim is that this makes it better suited to learners. Toddlers learn to speak with one and two word "sentences". Toddlers would have a much harder time learning to talk if you demanded full grammatical sentences from them.
• It's unproductive
  It can involve more typing, but that's a poor measure of productivity. A good analysis of the problem and good design of the solution are what you need for productivity. Language choice is a long way down the list.
• It's poorly structured
  You can write well structured assembly language and you can also write terrible code in any language.
• It's not portable
  This is true, but only in a trivial sense. The instructions themselves are specific to the chip, but the key skills are much the same on all machines. If you learn, on one machine, how to divide problems into simpler tasks and how to create suitable structures in memory, you can apply that knowledge on any machine.

  Think of it this way. You can learn to drive in a Toyota, then climb into a VW and, yes, the switches for the headlights or the windscreen wipers might be in different places, but the steering wheel and pedals will be much the same.

In my view, trying to learn a high-level language without understanding what the underlying machine is really doing is like trying to learn algebra without understanding arithmetic. It might not be impossible, but it's needlessly difficult. These videos explain the underlying machine to give a better understanding of what high level languages really do.

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a great way to learn.

These day's it's quite popular to do a "gap year" after finishing high school. What I did wasn't so much a "gap year" as a "gap career": a formal apprenticeship in motor mechanics and continuing in that trade for over 6 years.

Here are some of the key points of apprenticeship:

• You learn while doing real work in a real workplace
  
  You do real work from day 1 of your apprenticeship. You might just be washing parts at the beginning, but you see what your boss is doing all along. You get familiar with the most-used skills soonest, and everything you do is of some use.
• You learn from a qualified technician
  
  Ask questions and get an immediate answer. If it's a silly question, you may get to mop the floor.
• You get paid while you train
  
  Not a huge wage, but it beats paying for your education.

In the later years of my gap career, I studied for a degree in mathematics. This opened up my long-term career as a programmer.

I did an unofficial apprenticeship in that too. After university, my first job in a development team was an eye-opener. All these big tasks needed to be shared amongst team members without us all walking over each other's work. It was also a surprise that the trickiest technical problems — which you might think to be the hard part — were not the biggest challenge at all. Having the patience to steer clear of all the mundane little problems was the mark of the most valuable programmers.

It took several years learning by example from my more experienced colleagues before I was properly up to speed with the whole software development process.

I'm hoping these ArdEx videos constitute a kind of apprenticeship, You'll be seeing how a real technician goes about solving real problems. You're welcome to ask questions and I'll try answer, though it won't be as immediate as in a real apprenticeship. Then again, I won't get to tell you to mop the floor. You won't get paid while you train, but at least it'll cost you nothing.

The Goal

These videos won't make you a guru. My intention is to make clear just what the machine is doing when it runs any program. I hope this will lead to a clearer understanding of the computer and, consequently, of whatever languages you use for programming.