Weird title. “Don’t treat your 8-bit system as a PDP-11” or “Your 8-bit system is not a PDP-11” would have been slightly clearer, I was expecting to see at some point an explanation oh why it is a PDP (albeit a weird one). The connection is “you can program it in C, but things are different from how they would work in a PDP”, which doesn’t make it a “weird PDP”.

Guess it's meant to be a play on "your computer is not a fast PDP-11"?

Ah, yes, that might be what the author was referencing. But then again, “your 8-bit system is not a (fast|slow)? PDP-11” would have worked better

Hmm.

I see this is a website for a book on the Atari 2600. Which means it could be correct.

But in general, the 8-bit systems I've touched were Gameboy, TI83 calculators, Arduino / AVR / ATMega.

8-bitters are very common systems, even today (wtf 8051, just did already). It probably should have said Atari 2600 is a weird PDP-11.

I have no interest in learning how to program a mistake. By this I am not talking about the z80 or 6502, but rather, the Atari 2600.