Was never fond of FORTRAN, though fond of John Backus, but loved assembler. Thinking about counters and such was so right. And when we had 3 letter acronyms, looking for them on license plates was glorious. Remember ZAP? Zero and Add Packed? I got into the field in 1967, my husband in 1962. He had a very early paper out on “Yet Another Algol Compiler.”
That should raise a smile on any oldie's face.
You are a bit ahead of me. I was a student in 1967; but, I made a Storage Access Channel for the IBM 1130 for attaching nuclear instrumentation. I really liked assembler, and wrote in it almost exclusively for fifteen years. By that time I had written software on quite a number of big computers as well as mini-computers. I was very fond of the PDP-11. Later the Motorola 68000 won my assembler heart.
I'm retired now, but still have four clients. I build them micro controller based instruments and then write the software for them. I teach one class in the local high school: Embedded Computing. I use Arduino hardware, but I make them use gcc compilers directly, including a short plunge into assembler. One of my female students became so attached to assembler that she wrote her final project in assembler. Now she studies Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. My students love to learn to use digital logic ICs, hook them to microcomputers, and then program right down to the metal. (Some never lose the deer-in-the-headlights look.)
I started using C in 1980, and still use it on those micro controllers.
Do you still have your boots on?
Oh, yeah. I've exchanged email with Dr. Donnamae White, author of AMD's bit-slice manuals, application notes, and training courses. She is 77 and still a fire-brand.