It's only difficult, if you are not prepared to actually do some work, who taught me assembler programming, me that's who way back in the early 80's with the 6502, indeed the only formal programming language tution I have received has been BASIC back in 1979, and C++ for 1 semester when doing my degree, otherwise self taught, and usually having built my own hardware as well (true for 6802, 8051, PIC, eZ8, ARM7).

Compared to what I had to do (and I suspect it was the same for many of us here) for the 6802, today's newbies have it easy, simple download/debug cables and ready made demo/evaluation boards, I had to hardwire the CPU, ROM, RAM, ACIA, and PIA using wirewrap wire, and build a eprom emulator as well, debugging tools were limited to a logic probe, and it all worked very well, taught me a lot, and helped me through university (that was why I used a 6802).