Zilog Z80
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 4 microprocessors by recommenders
Recommended for its simple, expressive instruction set and long run in calculators and hobby machines, with people praising it as a first assembly language and a reliable workhorse.
Recommended for its simple, expressive instruction set and long run in calculators and hobby machines, with people praising it as a first assembly language and a reliable workhorse.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 68%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 23 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, expressive instruction set
“With Z80, it was much easier to compute arithmetic expressions than it is with RISC-V”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” “it is fun and IMO actually easier then lets say learning Haskell or JS from scratch”
Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “Designing a Language (2017)” “Z80 is more expressive and yields more interesting replicators faster”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Co-evolution of self-replication and function in a digital primordial soup” - Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50”
- Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50”
Long, reliable service life
“it's still doing good work in those calculators even 20+ years later”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” “Hard to name another CPU with that kind of run in active production.”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” “That's why the Z80 was around for so long”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the business depends on it?” Good for learning assembly
“I love the Z80, I started my career writing Z80 assembly for various embedded projects”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Z80 Membership Card” “it is fun and IMO actually easier then lets say learning Haskell or JS from scratch”
Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “Designing a Language (2017)” “it was a good introduction to how a computer works”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” Nostalgia from early computers
“Still I've always loved the z80, since my first computer the ZX Spectrum.”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” “I still love you Z80, you did pop my cherry!”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” “Just shows how far we had come at the time.”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50” - Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “The Zilog Z80 has turned 50”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Awkward memory access
“The Z80 is awful at accessing memory for anything other than a simple absolute address or sequential access”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Z80 – The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive (2021)” “The Z80 is awful at accessing memory for anything other than a simple absolute address”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Z80 – The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive (2021)” Irregular registers and bolted-on instructions
“The Z-80 suffers in this regard because like the x86, it uses 1-2 bytes for the bolted-on instructions and modes”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Comparing the Z80 and 6502 to Their Relatives” “The Z80 processor is a twisty collection of registers, none alike.”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “A graphical desktop for the ZX Spectrum” “Kludge instruction sets like the Z80.”
Comment from 11 Oct 2026 in “C for Rust programmers”
Other microprocessors people recommend
The three most recommended other microprocessors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MOS 6502 | 28 | 5 | 85% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Zilog Z80This page | 21 | 10 | 68% | 7 | 23 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Motorola 68000 | 17 | 5 | 77% | 9 | — | Approved |
| NEC V20 | 9 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
29 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“after I got tired of the Z80”
“Kludge instruction sets like the Z80.”
“That's why the Z80 was around for so long”
“The Z80 processor is a twisty collection of registers, none alike.”
“The Z80 is awful at accessing memory for anything other than a simple absolute address or sequential access”
“The Z80 is awful at accessing memory for anything other than a simple absolute address”
“Z80 is more expressive and yields more interesting replicators faster”
“the instruction set seems quite appropriate for the experiment”
“Most of these don't provide any benefit over using the existing 8080 opcodes”
“Zilog Z80 was orders of magnitude simpler”
“repurposing of the parity flag as an overflow flag, which was an extremely useful extension of Z80”
“Hard to name another CPU with that kind of run in active production.”
“With Z80, it was much easier to compute arithmetic expressions than it is with RISC-V”
“Making the parity flag not perfectly compatible was a wise choice.”
“block instructions and 16 bit extensions FTW”
“relative jumps didn't need to be adjusted for the load location”
“I still love you Z80, you did pop my cherry!”
“it was a good introduction to how a computer works”
“Still my favorite processor”
“it's still doing good work in those calculators even 20+ years later”
“Still I've always loved the z80, since my first computer the ZX Spectrum.”
“Just shows how far we had come at the time.”
“the Z80 is a nibble ALU. That's why its so slow compared to the competition”
“The Z-80 suffers in this regard because like the x86, it uses 1-2 bytes for the bolted-on instructions and modes”
“the Z80 offers a vastly superior programming experience”
“It's sad Z80 production was discontinued.”
“I love the Z80, I started my career writing Z80 assembly for various embedded projects”
“as opposed to running out of registers and/or crashing the stack with a Z-80”
“it is fun and IMO actually easier then lets say learning Haskell or JS from scratch”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.