It was so much worse before 61131. My career in industrial automation was on PLCs that predate 61131's existence and had no structured text language of any kind

It was so much worse before 61131. My career in industrial automation was on PLCs that predate 61131's existence and had no structured text language of any kind. Ladder only. I helped write a toolchain that compiles languages similar to 61131 (but, again, predating it) down to ladder. I've seen an implementation of bitwise floating-point math in ladder that no mortal human could possibly understand. Our experience was not that companies think electricians are stupid, but that they're electricians: they know electrical stuff, not computer programming. A ladder diagram is immediately recognizable to an electrician or technician who needs to diagnose an equipment failure and wasn't involved in writing the program.