alt Hacker NewsPart of the issue is that it suggests that the code had a spaghettified growth; it is neither sufficient nor necessary but lacking external constraints (like an entire library developed as a single c header) it suggests that code organisation is not great.
Hardware is often spaghetti anyway. There are a large number of considerations and conditions that can invalidate the ability to use certain ops, which would change the compilation strategy.
The idea of good abstractions and such falls apart the moment the target environment itself is not a good abstraction.