Seeing posts like these over the years is always cool. For me it can be very frustrating at times being young in this "industry". Technology that was designed by people like yourselves in some cases before I was born and trying to learn the old computer/electrical engineering design is something that isn't taught in any of the Universities CPE/EE undergrad programs I've been involved in in ways that are important to EEC technology imo. But I get it technology advances fast and so does education, so I try to cover modern and historic.
But an interesting perspective as I have been doing alot of embedded learning in the past couple years, and program using primarily C (typically my preference for compiled) and plenty of device specific assembly depending on the criticality. But we have modern compilers and MS degrees in most state universities by me barely touch modern compilers etc. I typically spend my nights trying to learn more about older hardware such as the 80xx Procs/MCUs and it is fun to see the constraints such as timing and pipelines, accumulators, fifo, massive gp register files, NO-ops everywhere, windows/ports, lookup routines and interpolation(presumably hand engineered), long state time delays for interrupt handling etc. Learning about that in ~2020 is like digging up graves. Its also fun to try and understand the MCU technology and advances, considering old x86 to modern MCU ISAs. Also motivation to learn specific old technology to be competitive and innovative is really hard to find, but it seems to come with time. Trying to be proficient in 10-15 programming languages, HDL, understanding compilers, JIT, modern hardware, hardware interfaces and standards, programmable logic. Being proficient in modern operating systems and security, proficient in analog and digital component design and signaling, pcb design and power delivery
Lastly learning in a time where Microchip and Broadcom datasheets exist and looking back at old Intel datasheets is rough. That doesn't even cover the ME education and experience when talking about calibrations.
Anyway I look forward to staying quiet and reading any information, and I'm trying my best to keep up.