I agree. I "cut my teeth" writing embedded code for DOD avionics computers and FAA radar systems. It had to be written in assembly language because the compilers of the day (1970s) were horribly inefficient and the "optimizers" were buggy. Everything had to be documented to DOD specifications and data item descriptions (DIDs). Thankfully, the source code, however, did not get loaded into ROM. The source code was printed, bound, and included in the documentation, along with a punched paper tape or punched card deck for the source and paper tape for the binary. Only the binary was programmed into the ROM chips - the largest avionics system I worked with in those days had a whopping 12K of ROM for the program and 4K of RAM for data.
When I moved to the commercial world, I programmed Intel 8008, 8080 and 8086 and Motorola 6800-class processors. (PS: I preferred the flexibility of the instruction set of Motorola processors over the Intel processors.)
Later, I moved on to minicomputers (remember them??), UNIX, C and finally to Intel 80x86-based "personal computers" running Windows 3 and 3.1 on top of DOS.
__________________ Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now. © 2009, Rex Hammock