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.)
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).
