Can you really learn how to program in machine code in high school?

…Maybe sometime as a small edge bite so a student gets a tiny idea how a processor gets his instruction.

In the early 1980s, the input of pure hex dumps was occasionally used to program basic operating systems stored in EPROMs.

This was, however, very prone to errors (only endless cloning of hex numbers, whose meaning was simply in the heavy amount.

Instead, Mnemonics (Assemblercode) was used for human-readable representation

• https://www.nayuki.io/page/a-fundamental-introduction-to-x86-assembly programming
• https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs216/guides/x86.html

Assembler code is not a machine code!

…and already requires a program (Assembler) to translate the Mnemonics into machine-readable commands.

In the early beginnings, the memory incoming with about 1 to 16kByte was still quite manageable and Assembler was the means of choice to tell the processor what to do. With increasing complexity of the tasks and availability of memory, the introduction of “prefabricated” function libraries began, whose stored machine code was only called with the transferred parameters. The age of compilers began. C, Pascal etc. displaced the assembler.

With an order you could set up procedures for the previously 20..30 lines assembler or even 200Byte machine code.

And the development continued… Today, object orientation binds data and executable code to a complex unit.

Only the machine code needed to start a normal Windows application could not be entered directly today. …and even assembler would be pure “mind.”

To this extent forget to want to program machine code.

…Besides Hannibal Lecter is free after a cell.🤯😵🥳

Even for relatively small microcontrollers, there are compilers which have translated high languages into efficient machine code.

For current PC/Apple/Android CPUs, you can’t overlook the machine code anymore. In addition to the normal commands, the special registers and data areas need to legitimize whether the code can be executed at all.

• https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(CPU)
• https://xinux.net/index.php/X86
• https://support.apple.com/de-de/guide/security/secc80b0cd0c/web

…of the same, even most high-language programmers do nothing and would burden them with “unusual” knowledge, simply because it is routine work done automatically by the compiler.

Even driver programmers will at best take care of addressing their hardware but not how the driver is integrated into an operating system.

And… a teacher on a gymnasium is likely to be in the middle of an eighth and acreage that capture the rough basics, 99% of the pupils would be asleep. (luckily… otherwise the brain would blow away)

Machine code definitely has to be of interest to someone who develops a compiler for a new processor, but this should be a type in the development department of a processor manufacturer and not a student of a gymnasium.

…For all others, the path ends with a jacket…

…I have to stop, my “Pfleger” brings my pills 🤫😏