It was a required course when I went to school. I've used it for these purposes on the job... to determine addresses for trace tools by dumping the assembly for use on in house tool sets...changing compilers and diagnosing issues that work on one and don't work on the other (look at the assembly of both and stare and compare...actually experienced this one myself which turned out to be a problem in the new compiler optimization code).
With that said, I agree with the rest of the posts, especially the "nerd" post which I took personally.
If the assembly question is basic, you might ask.