I think of the Atari ST as being much more like the ZX Spectrum. "Minimalism" is a polite way of describing it: you have a CPU and you have an area of memory (w

I think of the Atari ST as being much more like the ZX Spectrum. "Minimalism" is a polite way of describing it: you have a CPU and you have an area of memory (with a slightly bizarre layout) that represents what will appear on screen. Like the Spectrum, the CPU is nice enough to code for, but takes its time when doing anything remotely useful. (Maybe similar to Apple II as well. Very uncommon in the UK - never used it.) Of course, the ST has a few things going for it compared to the Spectrum: configurable display RAM address, minimally contended RAM, timer interrupts, quite apart from the increase in colours and pixels and the properly bitmapped display. But overall, it's the same sort of thing, to be used in the same sort of way. You'd approach coding for the C64 or Amiga very differently.