I wouldn’t be able to write Rollercoaster Tycoon in assembly because keeping track of all that code in assembly files must be hell, but people pretending like you need to be some kind of wizard to write assembly code are exaggerating.
Well, they’ve got a point for the bigger machine codes. Just the barebones specification for x86 is a doorstopper IIRC.
From what I’ve heard, writing big stuff in assembly comes down to play-acting the compiler yourself on paper, essentially.