On a slightly related note, chances are good anyone reading this has an 8051 within a few meters of them - they're close to omnipresent in USB chips, particularly hubs, storage bridges and keyboards / mice. The architecture is equally atrocious as the 6502.
btw: a good indicator is GCC support - AVR, also an 8-bit µC - is perfectly well supported by GCC. 8051 and 6502, you need something like SDCC [http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/]
btw: a good indicator is GCC support - AVR, also an 8-bit µC - is perfectly well supported by GCC. 8051 and 6502, you need something like SDCC [http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/]