From a hobbies point of view I'd actually argue the opposite. The nice thing about the old stuff (Ex. the 8259 PIC support they're removing here) is that it's much simpler to get going. They have very large limitations, but those don't matter when just starting, and they serve as a good stepping stone and learning opportunity before eventually moving on to the modern and more complicated stuff. Additionally if you're using a bootloader then the bulk of this is already solved for you anyway.