You might actually be right. When I read this:
> He wrote his own chip design software and analog simulator
I immediately thought of a modern toolchain. Had I known that this was done decades ago, I might have reacted differently.
Nonetheless, even decades ago, both Cadence and Synopsys likely had pretty advanced tools under development. I may be mistaken though.
Moore mentioned these in passing at the end if the link
https://colorforth.github.io/1percent.html
He was stressing the solution fits the problem. Not a solution which can cover/contain the problem
I think you subconsciously added the 'modern' in there somewhere and then argued against that.