the compilers of the day didn't optimize much I worked in the IBM mainframe segment to start my career, and we actually had an awesome Capex optimizing COBOL c

the compilers of the day didn't optimize much I worked in the IBM mainframe segment to start my career, and we actually had an awesome Capex optimizing COBOL compiler. We also had a core dump formatting system (not sure if it was part of the Capex set) that made dumps much easier to read and debug, plus they broke out the generated assembler code to make it quite intuitive. I got so good with reading their dumps that going to the first realtime debuggers was slower.