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You know what’s great about learning about 8 bit computers ? You can actually hold the entire architecture in your head... an you can build one with bits of wire and chips that cost a few quid. You can program them from first principles...
And you can visualise and measure what’s going on at the electrical level. And although they are vastly outclassed by modern hardware they use exactly the same principles... and you can learn so much.
Modern hardware is so advanced and miniaturised, so optimised and obfuscated that it’s difficult to get a physical, tangible understanding of what is actually going on.
And far from being useless, learning this old hardware feels truly magical.
It’s the same reason people write their own game engines rather than just use an existing commercial one. The point isn’t utility... the point is understanding and the feeling of total mastery of the domain.
