If anyone wants to learn about one of the more bare metal coding disciplines, I found a
book on x86 assembly online for free. I've been learning Pep/8 assembly this semester and I can't tell if I like it or not. On the one hand, it's very powerful and gives you a LOT of control about how data is manipulated and stored, but it's also a lot more annoying and complicated to do simple things in it than to use than C++ or Python or some other high level language.