They did not understand that their computers were clueless. Not only was it a bad program that generated poor layouts, but they did not even recognize that it was a bad layout. And, heck, you don't need a fancy computer to set up pairs or groups of transistors with common centroids. Often, there are significant matching errors when using transistors, or resistors, or capacitors, if common-centroid layout isn't used. Bipolar transistors have gradients of Vbe and beta.
Adjacent resistors can have poor matching due to gradients in etching and in sheet rho.
If you want your capacitor sets to match well, you must beware of gradients in etching and oxide thickness. Die stresses cause shifts that relate to linear gradients. If you insist on cross-coupling components that are not critical, you can waste lots of die space. Back in 1972, on Jim Pastoriza's AD550 Quad Current Switch, I observed some of the limitations of laying out a DAC's transistors all in a linear row. When some bits were switched ON or OFF, there were significant thermal tails.