[dashwav]

MIPS still has a very large presence in the education sector as well - MIPS asm is very easy to learn because of how consistent it's syntax is and the plethora of open source debuggers as well.

Learning MIPS was what originally got me interested in ASM programming since we had a class that was focused on MIPS code and another class that had us build a digital MIPS processor from scratch. The combination of these two classes really sold me on the magic of super low-level programming.

[lou1306]

For those who want to take a look, "Computer Organization and Design" by Hennessy and Patterson is a very common textbook on the subject (at least here in Italy). I found reading it to be a very, very instructive experience.

Its version of 32-bit MIPS is so simple, its whole instruction set fit in a 2-side cheatsheet (the famous "green sheet"). The design of the CPU is quite easy too. Given an instruction and its binary representation, it is almost straightforward to see how each bit contributes to the computation (setting the correct ALU operation, retrieving a value from the correct register, etc.).

[woadwarrior01]

Also, Microchip’s PIC32 microcontrollers, which are still around, have a 32bit MIPS ISA.

[333c]

Yep, I also learned MIPS in my CS class. It's pretty nice to program in.

[wott]

MIPS is typically seen in computer architecture class because it is simple and regular (at least the original version seen in class). However, for Assembly programming, MIPS, like (almost?) all RISC instructions sets, is tedious. Give me any CISC with a generous range of addressing modes, and I take any day over MIPS/RISC.

We can make a parallel between those low-level ISA and high-level languages: a language like Lisp is lean and simple so it is taught and presented as good design (and people who went through that education keep that in memory), but when it comes to produce real program almost everybody chooses a much less regular language, which is way more practical. (Same could be said for stack-based languages like Forth, which present an extremely simple model to apprehend, but that doesn't mean at all that it is simple to program in.)

Or postfix vs infix for mathematical expressions/calculations. Same principle: the one which is based on a very simple model is praised by aesthetes, but almost everybody prefers the other one, which is simpler to use because it is more natural, despite being based on a more complex model.

In fact, the simplicity of the model is not of much interest for the user, it just makes the life of the implementer easier. But for 1 implementer, there are thousands or millions of users, who want ease of use, not ease of implementation.

[saagarjha]

It’s nice until you get to its annoying and fairly irrelevant pipelining model.

[ibrault]

Can confirm, I was taught MIPS assembly in a computer architecture course as recently as 2 years ago.