> 68k assembly coding was pure joy because of its elegant and consistent instruction set
That's maybe a little spun. The separated address/data registers (there are two kinds of registers, and memory operations need to use one from each to combine to a final address) played hell with optimizer strategies for years.
In fact 68k compiler output was significantly sub-par pretty much throughout its lifetime. The "cobbled-together mess" had (post-386 anyway) a significantly more orthogonal instruction set and was just plain easier to optimize, even for humans.
That's maybe a little spun. The separated address/data registers (there are two kinds of registers, and memory operations need to use one from each to combine to a final address) played hell with optimizer strategies for years.
In fact 68k compiler output was significantly sub-par pretty much throughout its lifetime. The "cobbled-together mess" had (post-386 anyway) a significantly more orthogonal instruction set and was just plain easier to optimize, even for humans.