> If my school's library had had Machine Code for Beginners, my career might have been very different. (I'm actually a bit annoyed; I didn't know that existed).

It's actually very good. I remember reading it at age 11 or so, and coming away knowing much more low-level stuff about computers than even the 18yo in the final year of school who were literally studying the stuff.

Things like "each instruction is a number", and registers like the PC, overflow, etc.

I went through a period (and a forest of pages) trying to write an entire game in machine code alone (with a small basic shim to load it).

It's a very approachable book.