No, not even given the historic context this makes any sense.
We're not talking about embedded software with special constrains here!
This story is about mundane enterprise software.
Nothing in the story justified this insane level of over-engineering and premature optimization.
Just using the "optimizing compiler" was deemed "good enough" for all other needs of the company, likely…
Also nobody asked for that over-"optimized" throw-it-away-and-start-over-if-you-need-to-amend-anything-crap.
I have still this warmth nostalgia feeling when looking at this story, but when thinking about it with quite some experience in real world software engineering I'm very sure that this kind of programmer would be one of the worst hires you could probably run into.
Finding any valid excuses for "write-only" code is hard, very hard. This was also true back in the days this story plays.
Sorry for destroying your nostalgia feeling, but please try to look at it from a professional perspective.
We're not talking about embedded software with special constrains here!
This story is about mundane enterprise software.
Nothing in the story justified this insane level of over-engineering and premature optimization.
Just using the "optimizing compiler" was deemed "good enough" for all other needs of the company, likely…
Also nobody asked for that over-"optimized" throw-it-away-and-start-over-if-you-need-to-amend-anything-crap.
I have still this warmth nostalgia feeling when looking at this story, but when thinking about it with quite some experience in real world software engineering I'm very sure that this kind of programmer would be one of the worst hires you could probably run into.
Finding any valid excuses for "write-only" code is hard, very hard. This was also true back in the days this story plays.
Sorry for destroying your nostalgia feeling, but please try to look at it from a professional perspective.