hehe,
i tried to get the focus away from this "issue". i thought its not so important for somebody who wants to test his skills against this crackme.
about my perception of asm: i am a bit familiar with it. and i am fully with u about HLLs. about ca 14 years ago i learned asm for i386 after switch from C128 to pc. at that time i used 6510 asm for about 3 years (i started at the age of 13 with it), where i coded my own 4 bit audio sample sequencer (like drum machine), gfx effects, little games, and reversed some games. my 1st programming language on i386 was asm, where i coded intros, gfx effects, little games, and then my first polymorphic, full stealth, resident incfectors, various programs to bypass novell security and custom protectors used at school
i developed electronic devices using 8051 microcontroller derivates, pic microcontrolllers (before it understood basic

), ... in asm of course.
then came pascal, then c, then VB, then linux: shell, perl, javascript, php, ... then VC++, then hp-ux, solaris, aix, then osx reversing.
usually i am quite concerned about size where it matters. like in virus coding for example. however for a beginners crackme just all is fine in my opinion.
regards, 0xf001