When comparing ASP.NET MVC vs Assembly, the Slant community recommends Assembly for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Assembly is ranked 49th while ASP.NET MVC is ranked 61st. The most important reason people chose Assembly is:
One of the best ways to learn how a computer actually works is to work your way up from lower level abstractions. Assembly, being only a level above machine code, is low enough level to make it clear how the computer is actually performing a computation, including code flow and loops, but high enough level to not be excessively tedious for the type of small projects that a student would do at the beginning of their first programming class. Use of an assembler with macros can stretch this even a bit further.
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Pros
Pro Mature
The framework has many build-in tools, and many packages have been written targeting the framework.
Pro Cross platform
.Net Core can work on any platform.
Pro Widely used
It's pretty easy to find a job with it and there's plenty of documentation and tutorials around.
Pro Extensive documentation
There are a lot of resources available to get help.
Pro Fast
Asp.NET Core on Linux is fast accordingly to TechEmpower benchmarks.
Pro Asp.NET core provides balance between magic/agility and craftsmanship
You can get ordinary details quickly but with complete freedom to make your craft, knowing everything that is happening underneath the cloths. The highly modular system makes it possible to scale small applications to large ones with ease.
Pro It has more users than any other backend web framework
Getting your next contract is easy with this on your CV.
Pro Low Level - it's how the computer works
One of the best ways to learn how a computer actually works is to work your way up from lower level abstractions. Assembly, being only a level above machine code, is low enough level to make it clear how the computer is actually performing a computation, including code flow and loops, but high enough level to not be excessively tedious for the type of small projects that a student would do at the beginning of their first programming class. Use of an assembler with macros can stretch this even a bit further.
Pro Naturally creates fast and small programs
Because of its natural syntax and low-level nature, assembly language programs are typically really small and fast.
Unlike other programming languages, in assembly language it is really hard to create a slow and over-bloated program.
Pro You must look into it if you really want to understand what computers do
There is no other way to understand a processor, so dig in.
Pro Useful for embedded systems
A curriculum that involves an embedded component, such as an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, can encourage students by allowing them to immediately connect their work with 'real systems'. Assembly is the ideal language for getting started with and understanding these devices, and since Assembly can be called from C, the code will still be useful if students move on to C later in the program.
Pro Uniform syntax
Assembly language syntax is relatively uniform, and so there's less room for a student to get confused by obscure characters, or miss some meaning implied by structure, such as with scoping rules, or call-by-name/value/reference semantics. While there may be a lot of mnemonics to look up, most work involves only a very small subset of them.
Cons
Con Core and full ASP.NET are bit confusing sometimes
While not in feature parity (yet) they are still apart and support sometimes funky combinations of features - full ASP.NET has all the bells and whistles but doesn't offer cross platform so you may have to do some research what you really need. That being said, it got a lot better in 2.0.
Con Expensive
You need to have the plate to maintain a site.
Con Difficult learning curve
Starting off as a beginner with assembly language could prove very daunting. I suggest learning a high level language first (e.g. C) to get a good grasp of programming - especially dealing with bits, bytes, numbers, accessing memory with pointers (which is why I suggest C).
Then once that person is comfortable writing C (or whatever high level language) programs, they would find moving to assembler a little less of a "What the hell?!!!" experience.
Con Rarely a requirement or used in professional employment
(except for experts, which will outperform you in assembly language and execution speed on any day of the week, simply because they have full control of the processor.)
Con Not very portable
The instruction set may change depending on what CPU architecture is being used. Also, there will be some differences in implementations due to different assemblers being used, such as with changes in OS.
Con Language for those sadists that like pain
Not recommended as a first language. However, in small doses to show how higher level code is executed, can be of some value. Is also a language that will take a longer time to learn or finish projects with, so usually not for those who are in a hurry to get anything in particular done.