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The 6502 was weird back in the day as well, just weird in an ubiquitous way. It’s registers are too small, it’s stack is too small, it’s address space is too small. Argument passing often had to be done using the zero page, and since none of its registers can hold a respectable portion of its address space it requires hacks to implement such obscurities as C-style pointers. No current ABI can trace its origin to the 6502 (not even ARM).
Sure, back in the day the alternatives at the price point were worse, but that doesn’t make the 6502 good.
If you want a good CPU design with a 16-bit address space, take a look at the PDP-11.
I never said that the 6502 was good. I was questioning you calling it weird as if it was uncommon, when it wasn’t, because it was one of the most popular chips in its era.
Many say that the x86 architecture is awful. But to say that it’s weird would be quite the stretch.
It’s weird in the sense that software development has moved in other directions. A tagged-architecture stack machine like the Burroughs Large System is weird as well, even though it’s been highly successful and very influential on later designs (eg. Forth, SmallTalk).
If we’d still be using bank switching and overlays I’d say learning to code assembly on a 6502 is a great introduction to modern computers, but we’re not so it’s not.
The 6502 was weird back in the day as well, just weird in an ubiquitous way. It’s registers are too small, it’s stack is too small, it’s address space is too small. Argument passing often had to be done using the zero page, and since none of its registers can hold a respectable portion of its address space it requires hacks to implement such obscurities as C-style pointers. No current ABI can trace its origin to the 6502 (not even ARM).
Sure, back in the day the alternatives at the price point were worse, but that doesn’t make the 6502 good.
If you want a good CPU design with a 16-bit address space, take a look at the PDP-11.
I never said that the 6502 was good. I was questioning you calling it weird as if it was uncommon, when it wasn’t, because it was one of the most popular chips in its era.
Many say that the x86 architecture is awful. But to say that it’s weird would be quite the stretch.
It’s weird in the sense that software development has moved in other directions. A tagged-architecture stack machine like the Burroughs Large System is weird as well, even though it’s been highly successful and very influential on later designs (eg. Forth, SmallTalk).
If we’d still be using bank switching and overlays I’d say learning to code assembly on a 6502 is a great introduction to modern computers, but we’re not so it’s not.