You&#x27;re right that trusting the assembly intuitions leads to danger when confronted with a standard compliant optimizing compiler.  But on the other hand, unless one understands how processors actually execute code, I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s possible to write high performance C.<p>And if one isn&#x27;t writing for high performance, probably one shouldn&#x27;t be using C.  I like the suggestion in a sibling about teaching C in the context of programming a microcontroller.  I think this might bridge the gap a bit: encourage the right intuitions, without creating dangerous misconceptions.