[chii]

Knowing how a loop is implemented in MIPS means your now have enough knowledge to debug assembly, and perhaps do low level performance optimisations. It's not useless, just not directly and immediately. You won't be able to lean on any foundational work if you hadn't learnt it, and you'll have a super hard time doing complex things later, like reverse engineering.

[slg]

What percentage of developers ever have to debug assembly or do low level performance optimizations? I am 10 years into my career and I have only professionally seen assembly code once. We have abstracted most of these low level things out of the normal life of most developers. That isn't to say it isn't important for some, but there are a lot more developers who would benefit more from a class on design principles than a class on assembly.