Another important piece is that the total size of the code (223+32) is determined by the _word size_; in the common case, 8 bits. For an N-bit word architecture

Another important piece is that the total size of the code (223+32) is determined by the _word size_; in the common case, 8 bits. For an N-bit word architecture, your code may contain at most -1+2^N bits, or 255. So to practically implement an RS(32k, 32k), you'd need an efficient way to operate on 16 byte words, which we just didn't have in the 70s when these codes were devised.