this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Though I really like the concept of building a new device which incorporates the inherent ease of programmability of the computers of yore, I think the 6502 is just too weird and limited for doing so. For example, in order to cram a halfway decent amount of memory into the thing they had to resort to bank switching. At the least they should've gone with a 65816 (apparently they tried but they initially had some problems with the '816 address bus multiplexing).
Also, how would that 'weirdness' impact using the device in a teaching context?
They learn how to program in a more efficient way that makes better use of limited memory and CPU cycles. Which frankly is something modern programmers and game designers could very much benefit from considering how bloated and unoptimized much of modern software is, probably because they didn't need to think about whether computers can actually run it.