The fact that those things existed does not refute the GP's point. Many companies well into the 80s at least had programmers and codebases that had to be weaned

The fact that those things existed does not refute the GP's point. Many companies well into the 80s at least had programmers and codebases that had to be weaned away from assembly, despite the fact that higher-level alternatives had existed for a while. That's just empirical fact, regardless of the reasons. I myself started programming in 68K assembly on the original Mac because I couldn't afford a compiler and interpreted languages (there were at least Lisp and Forth) couldn't be used to write things like desk accessories. Remember, gcc wasn't always something one could just assume for any given platform. The original statement is correct; yours is not, because of limited perspective.