The author themselves points out that a "big pile of gates" is not the best approach here, but I'm kind of surprised that at no point did they attempt to build another representation of the circuit and either execute it in a table-driven way, or write a short script that spits out go for compilation.
> but I'm kind of surprised that at no point did they attempt to build another
Perhaps because the existing implementation had already served its purpose - an educational exercise to understand CPU design, and not an instruction-level emulator or transcompiler.
The author themselves points out that a "big pile of gates" is not the best approach here, but I'm kind of surprised that at no point did they attempt to build another representation of the circuit and either execute it in a table-driven way, or write a short script that spits out go for compilation.