Going from Motorola 68k to x86 with few preconceptions in the nineties was quite a shock after slowly having been convinced that the grass actually was greener.

Going from Motorola 68k to x86 with few preconceptions in the nineties was quite a shock after slowly having been convinced that the grass actually was greener. On the x86 side I was surprised to find an unnecessarily cryptic assembly language, little-endian words and a byzantine memory model for starters. Hacks upon layers of hacks and not the intuitive and aesthetically pleasing solutions seems to win out in most cases.