I'd say the reasons you say it's vintage are the exact reasons I'd say it's timeless! It's a fictional assembly language which is at the level of abstraction he wants and something that won't age because it never existed to begin with.
No, it's not timeless. Only the fact that it was updated to MMIX [1] proves that it's not.
And the fact that it's fictional it doesn't mean it won't age. Because he didn't pull the language out of thin air and he wasn't working in a vacuum, he was inspired by the trend at the time of its invention [2]. I bet if it was written today, it would look quite different, as proof of his language update for the recent editions [3]. So, it's anything but timeless, as said by even the author.
> won't age because it never existed to begin with.
Same as Da Vinci's helicopter? I think that one also aged quite poorly.
