I work in vs2015 c#, which is a beautiful language, but when you're stuck in the late 80s and early 90's and stupidly insist on doing everything yourself without frameworks it chafes. There is no getting away from GDI. Is it even possible to access the graphics hardware directly anymore without resorting to a framework? I see a lot of acronyms going around, which have you had experience with? Any support asm? Basically I'm feeling the itch for something lower level than current Microsoft technologies.
(and if there was any way it could resemble 'work' that would be a plus lol)