attiny85 is pretty interactive, it has full debugging capabilities (via RST pin no less, so no taking away precious GPIO). And with cycle times of <30 seconds,

attiny85 is pretty interactive, it has full debugging capabilities (via RST pin no less, so no taking away precious GPIO). And with cycle times of <30 seconds, printf-based debugging (or more often, LED+button based debugging) becomes very feasible too. When comparing with old machines, you just need to look not just at the chip itself, but at the whole package - attiny85 + ICE + host PC using to program it. You know how original VAX-11 included a whole separate PDP-11 computer just for booting and diagnostic? It's the same with attiny85, it needs a whole separate computer for program upload and debugging. The fact that this "program upload" computer is many magnitudes faster does not really matter. As for audience / social aspect, I don't think this is coming back - the choice is simply too big now. When Commodore was the only option, everyone had to use it. But now some people like python, some like small MCUs, some do websites, some do JS demos, some do robotics, etc... - so there is less chance that you'll find room full of homogeneous computers. (and RP2040's manual is 642 pages, substantially bigger, so one is less likely to know it all by heart. At least it's better than STM32 family, where some devices have multiple thousands pages of documentation)