Enjoying this thread and reflecting on the past ... once upon a time, people said that OOLs like C++ would dumb down C programmers ... that HLLs like C would dumb down assembler programmers ... I have seen people enter machine language into a mainframe using a toggle switch. Long ago, there must have been some whale saying "if we crawl up on the land, we will lose our ability to fight off sharks, so I'm gonna stay here in the ocean and be a real cetacean." Been around the block a few times