You have no idea who you are talking to. I was hand-coding Zilog Z-80 and Intel 8031 assembly language when I was a young tween/teen. I would then put the code into a simple editor on a CP/M machine (either a Morrow Designs MD-11 or a Kaypro II and sometimes an Osborne I) and then cross-compile it to hex files for burning EPROMS. I did this as part of my father's business making single board computers for industrial control applications. I also did component level troubleshooting and repair of the boards we would make if they came back for repair from our customers. Not long after I wrote my own cross compilers for the MOS 6502 and Motorola 6809 microprocessors since I used those in my own projects, which included a self-navigating robot platform that won me several awards in my school and state industrial arts competitions. I learned to solder at age 7 and was designing my own circuits at age 8. My soldering skills today are better than wave soldering results for through-hole components. The robot platform was 100% from scratch built. I made all the boards for it including the 6809E based SBC, a custom motor control board and a very custom switch-mode power supply with a hand wound toroidal transformer that output five different power rails. I also did the mechanical work for the robot which involved Plexiglas and metal fabrication. I qualified to go to the national competition for my work but declined the offer because of a death in the family which threw things into chaos for a while. I won't go into details because it would DOX me, but I have written some code that serves as the basis for a popular software communication techniques that is still in wide use today. I have also succeeded in creating code that was DoD certified for secure system-to-system interfaces which is still in use after 15 years. I didn't need any dev kits or shitty code written by junior programmers to do any of this. My work today is at a slower pace, but that is by choice since I have different priorities in life now. I still find time to have side projects that are well beyond what most programmers and electrical engineers can do (I'm both of those things). But yeah, your direct editing of machine code for EPROMS is good. I won't take that away because it takes a fair bit of smarts to do such a thing and there aren't many people out there that can. But...I guarantee you that I'm no wet-behind-the-ears tech guy here. I've spent 40 years in the industry split between EE and software development and I've worked every IT position there is. I paid my dues but I still mentor a lot of young EE and programmers out there because I care about their progress and the progress of the industry. I even know another GenX programmer/EE that is so far out there with his work that even Microsoft and AMD have contracted him to solve **their** problems they can't get past. Modern computing is GenX's game. Sure other generations got the ball rolling, but we were the first generation born into it and we became its masters. The 8-bit and below world lasted a long time but it took GenX to quicken the pace to get us to where we are now in technology. Electronics and programming are in my blood. I was born to do this stuff. Take your hatred for younger people elsewhere.