I don't fully understand the AREA directive in ARM Assembly Keil uVision5

Question

I'm learning ARMASM in KEIL uVision 5 using the LPC1768 architecture and the simulator using debugging in the IDE. I wanted to write an assembly program which will find the minimum value in any array. Here's the first code that I've written:

    area pgrm, code, readonly
    export __main

end_array dcd 0xffffffff

__main  
    ldr r0, =list
    ldr r1, [r0]
    ldr r3, end_array

find_min
    add r0, #4
    ldr r2, [r0]
    cmp r2, r3
    
    beq stop
    
    cmp r1, r2
    
    movgt r1, r2
    
    b find_min
    
stop b stop

    area pgrmdata, data, readwrite

; Defining an array
list dcd 4, 20, 3, 10, 100, 3, 4, 0xffffffff
    
    end

But it wasn't working at all. The registers 1 and 2 were not being loaded with any values even if the program was running and registers r0 and PC were being incremented forever.

Then after hours of trial and error I happend to change the pgrmdata section attribute of READWRITE to READONLY. Now the changed code looks like this:

    area pgrmdata, data, readonly

; Defining an array
list dcd 4, 20, 3, 10, 100, 3, 4, 0xffffffff
    
    end

The code works perfectly fine now. I don't understand why this section being readonly or read and writeable even matters and why the latter attribute is running the program but not updating the registers at all.

Also, I know that these codes will work:

    area pgrm, code, readonly
    export __main

end_array dcd 0xffffffff
list dcd 4, 20, 3, 10, 100, 3, 4, 0xffffffff

__main  
    ldr r0, =list
    ldr r1, [r0]
    ldr r3, end_array

find_min
    add r0, #4
    ldr r2, [r0]
    cmp r2, r3
    
    beq stop
    
    cmp r1, r2
    
    movgt r1, r2
    
    b find_min
    
stop b stop
    end

and

    area pgrm, code, readonly
    export __main

end_array dcd 0xffffffff

__main  
    ldr r0, =list
    ldr r1, [r0]
    ldr r3, end_array

find_min
    add r0, #4
    ldr r2, [r0]
    cmp r2, r3
    
    beq stop
    
    cmp r1, r2
    
    movgt r1, r2
    
    b find_min
    
stop b stop

    area pgrm, data, readonly

; Defining an array
list dcd 4, 20, 3, 10, 100, 3, 4, 0xffffffff
    
    end

These work because in the first one the data is in the same section and in the second one the linker merges both the sections to one because I've given them both the same name (but my instinct says that this is something I shouldn't generally do). Am I missing something here? It'll help me a lot if you can link me some resources to learn about NXP LCP1768 ARMASM and also general assembly. Thanks.

Edit

I noticed that even the r1 register is not loading in the right memory address for the list.