alt Hacker NewsI'm sure a modern compiler would have no problem with it, but in 1980 optimizer technology wasn't there yet. Modern compilers use more memory that engineers would dare dream of in 1980.
By having no problem I mean we know enough about writing an optimizer to write such a thing. I don't think any compiler does, just that they could.
Compilers in 1980 generated 64k code segments and had no other memory model.
Most people wrote assembler particularly if they wanted to use more then 64k.
Most non assembly programs were interpreted oddly enough and most such interpreters were also mostly 64k.