"Jeff Laughton (Dr Jefyll on the 6502.org forum) says, "I recall hanging out with a programmer pal o' mine and a younger fella who was in college. The young fella was complaining, 'We have to take assembly language,' and Len corrected him immediately, saying, 'You get to take assembly language!'"
<g>
What's great is that learning assembly is like taking the first step to understanding the bridge between software and hardware.
I remember a taking class that started out as confusing as hell. The first few exercises seemed really mystical and just so brittle. You'd have to be a wizard to ever get this, one thinks. But by the end of the class, we made an asteroids-like game, complete with RNG based on input timing (the time between game execution and when the user clicked start). That was really an enlightening moment.