Comment by jacquesm 3 days ago
If 8 bit: 6809. If 32 bit: 68K. Those are miles ahead of the 6502. Otoh if you want to see a fun quirky chip the 6502 is definitely great, and I'd recommend you use a (virtual) BBC Micro to start you off with.
Sucked, compared to? If the 6502 sucked on every other metric but cost, while it would have gotten some use I don't think it would have been as heavily used as it was.
The 6502 is from 1975, the 6809 from 1978.
The 6800 (from 1974) could have been competitive with the 6502, but (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809#6800_and_6502):
“The 6800 was initially sold at $360 in single-unit quantities, but had been lowered to $295. The 6502 was introduced at $25, and Motorola immediately reduced the 6800 to $125. It remained uncompetitive and sales prospects dimmed. The introduction of the Micralign to Motorola's lines allowed further reductions and by 1981 the price of the then-current 6800P was slightly less than the equivalent 6502, at least in single-unit quantities. By that point, however, the 6502 had sold tens of millions of units and the 6800 had been largely forgotten.”
Yeah, the 6809 is just ridiculously good to learn assembly language on. Motorola cleaned up all the idiocies from the 6800 on the 6809.
The attention the 6502 get is just because of history. The advantage the 6502 had was that it was cheap--on every other axis the 6502 sucked.