(Personally the last time I wrote thousands of lines of assembler was for the 68000.)
Weren't you the lucky one. When I first started in computer servicing it was in the (just) pre micro days, the system was built using ttl logic and some early examples of logic arrays for 1/2 adders etc. Nobody ever got round to writing an assembler for it so it was programmed in m/c code, luckily it was dedicated to 2 tasks only.
Then we graduated to a Texas instruments 990 mini computer and life got much easier.