@fluidlogic @quinn maybe more of a mix than you might guess.
I'm not active in any "retro" sense, but I did work for an 8-bit maker in the 1980s - as well as having the same gear personally.
Which means I don't have a rosy nostalgia and instead remember how flaky the hardware was, how scant the documentation was, how few were our ways to get answers - etc.
But what I am grateful for in retrospect, is how understandable those systems were. So much of what I learned then, still guides me.