Irving Ziller, one of the original members of the FORTRAN team, describing the resistance of early programmers to the introduction of a compiler: "And in the background was the scepticism, the entrenchment of many of the people who did programming in this way at that time; what was called 'hand-to-hand combat' with the machine." From https://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res41.htm
I've owned this book since it was new in the year 2000, but it has sat on the shelf alone and unloved for at least 20 years. I think I did probably read it back then, but it pre-dates blogged notes about books like this one. However, with my new found interest in assembly language programming for ancient CPU architectures, this seems like the sort of book which I might enjoy again. That said, let's be honest here -- the content is interesting, and this book is still recommended as the best introduction to this topic, which is impressive after a 25 year lifespan -- but Shakespeare this ain't. So I found the book interesting and enjoyed reading it, but wont say much more than that here. I am left with an urge to understand UEFI more. Maybe I should write a bad boot loader? Either way, I've had to add some books on that to the Amazon wishlist now...