Don't know if you mean me, but I'm hardly nostalgic about "assembly language" (not the same as "machine language".
The point I was making was to understand how the machine works, you need to take assembly language and possibly (yes, in my case) a course or two in computer engineering.
Then read lots of books like Code Complete, Writing solid code, Refactoring techniques (Martin Fowler), Design Patterns (GoF), and others.
Standard CS stuff, that's all.
(P.S. For specialized tasks, people still code in assembler.)