There have always been compilers that skip the "make assembly source" and go straight to object files - in fact the first time I saw unix V6 cc I was a bit scan

There have always been compilers that skip the "make assembly source" and go straight to object files - in fact the first time I saw unix V6 cc I was a bit scandalised (but it made sense for a system where programs had to be <= 64k in size)