When you speak about code from the 1970s in particular, you need to appreciate the extremely limited language features that were available. They did not even h

When you speak about code from the 1970s in particular, you need to appreciate the extremely limited language features that were available. They did not even have while-loops in the language until Fortran 77. While-loop functionality used to be implemented using DO-loops mixed with GOTOs. You can't fault the people of that era for using the only tools that were available to them.