BASIC (essentially any 3GL) never wore such a veil. To suggest discrete logic and IC-level assembly compares to issuing commands via the LEGO Mindstorms protocol perfectly illustrates the chasm between learning and understanding.
Yes. That is certainly a good argument against that specific example, and it is one I agree with. But it does not apply generally.
> To suggest discrete logic and IC-level assembly compares to issuing commands via the LEGO Mindstorms protocol perfectly illustrates the chasm between learning and understanding.
But learning and understanding what? Why is it (as I imply that your argument is) important to understand assembly-level instructions when it is not important to understand the underlying electronics? Why is this level special?
In addition to all the general arguments I outlined above, there is one additional argument to be made against assembly language: In today’s processors, I am given to understand that these assembly language instruction sets are largely a high-level language, emulated by microcode – the assembly instructions you write have very little to do with what the processor is actually doing in a modern hardware architecture, and therefore teach you exactly the wrong things about how a modern processor works.