Practically, 68k is far more usable in AT&T syntax than x86. When I used to do PalmPilot development, you could basically write standard 68k asm with just some extra %s sprinkled before registers and as would be fine with it. The x86 AT&T syntax is far more alien compared to the syntax in the official manuals, with arguments backward and nonstandard instruction names like addl and movabsq.
I never understood the need for names for movabsq. The top comment on this HN discussion is about how this is all a historical quirk, people wanting to get a job done quick and dirty. But movabsq is a new instruction introduced only with x86-64 (then known as AMD64). With the 64-bit transition why didn't they take the opportunity to clean up and reorganize this mess?
