In 1976 I built my first micro. It was an RCA COSMAC ELF 1802 with 256bytes RAM. No EPROM you just toggled your code in binary directly to the RAM via DMA. Had those expensive $25ea TIL311 displays and ran with a large 1MHz crystal.
My first personal computer was a Commodore PET with 16K (Wrote Conways life in the second cassete buffer)
I went on to build an Apple II clone, then a IIe clone... (you could buy the bare circuit board on Queen St in Toronto back then)
Then a clone 8088 (PC) about 1800 solder points if I recall, put a V20 in it and zoom along at 4.7MHz
Played with a 8052BASIC along the way as well as a Z8 BASIC
Now I've been working with PICs since the 16C54 came out.
Programmed in Assembler, BASIC & Pascal. Never quite got the hang of C
I currently program in Parallax assembler, I just like it and find the code eaiser to read then MPASM.
My first ever PIC was 16F84A with a simple board with 8 LEDs and 4 buttons that I designed. Since then I programed defferent PICs, ranging from 10F to DsPIC.
I program in Assembly only, although I can do C for PC.
I used various Serial programmers (parallel never worked for me) until I built an ICD2 which is perfect.
I wasn't refering to the robot with my MicroController comment, I was refering to all the MicroProcessor lists. Though I can certainly see it when you have to put it together.
8008 for me in 1978. First PC was a TRS-80 with 4K of RAM and a cassette tape for loading and saving programs. First job was programming Moto 6800 in hex from instruction card (I still have them somewhere).. Later we got a assember for our Digital VAX machine. God I am old.
I worked at Radio Shacks computer centre on Avenue rd in Toronto and sold & repaired the old TRS-80. We had a model II with all the options upstairs. The original model 1s didn't have keyboard debouncing. Was a problem if the keys got dirty.
I remember NIM was cool looking and the old filght-sim by airsoft.
I went on to try and sell the "BMC IF800" computer at Radio Trade Supply on Yonge st. Weird had a colour monitor & printer built in. They had a cool portable 132 column by 25 line computer portable too. Overheated and very heavy with a tiny but wide display. https://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=116
Played with the Spectravideo 328 too. I liked MSX BASIC and miss the old TI9918 IC