[danmaz74]

Not OP, but I learned assembly on the 6502, and its simplicity make it easy to create a mental model of the internals of a CPU - these relate very well with a low level language like c, even if today's CPUs are so much more advanced (and difficult to study).

[nategri]

OP here---you nailed it. Pointers and pointers-to-pointers can seem pretty abstract unless you work one level closer to the metal for a bit.

[duskwuff]

Perhaps a better target might be the 68000, then? Still a relatively simple architecture, but one that more closely resembles a modern system -- multiple general-purpose registers, and ones which can be used as pointers without weird workarounds. (The 8-bit data / 16-bit address nature of the 6502 makes pointers complicated.)

[danmaz74]

Could be. Later I also worked with machine code on the 68K and it stuck to me less than the 6502, but it might just be because I felt that more like a chore than when I was dabbling with the 6502 (which I learned when I was just a kid).