Note that one of the claimed benefits is "expressions that eliminate most temporary variables". That was a huge advantage because memory to store source code was scarce, and even more so because compilers were dumb. If you used a temporary, chances were the compiler would use a store for every write and a load for every read.
Compilers were dumb because they had to run at reasonable speed in scarce memory. The time of the 63-pass Fortran compiler for the IBM 1401 (http://ibm-1401.info/1401-FORTRAN-Illustrated.html) was gone, but for microprocessors, not by much.
Note that one of the claimed benefits is "expressions that eliminate most temporary variables". That was a huge advantage because memory to store source code was scarce, and even more so because compilers were dumb. If you used a temporary, chances were the compiler would use a store for every write and a load for every read.
Compilers were dumb because they had to run at reasonable speed in scarce memory. The time of the 63-pass Fortran compiler for the IBM 1401 (http://ibm-1401.info/1401-FORTRAN-Illustrated.html) was gone, but for microprocessors, not by much.