Hi, Mike

I do not think I'ts a cultural practise, but an old time heritage ...

Have a look to the very first HP programmable calculators programming examples ( HP27C i.e. )
: the memory was very small and you had to spare as much space as you could to get a decent running program ...
If you deal with aerospace things, try to get infos about the processor used aboard the famous Grumman F14 ( called 944 ??? https://www.framboise314.fr/le-premi...u-f-14-tomcat/ ) ...


You are one of the " arduino generation " with plenty of wasted program space !!!
nowadays, we find processors with Huge memory and people do not care about wasting hundreds of addresses.

Now, in the end, I kind of feel you are confusing Basic subs and C functions ...

Try to think BASIC or C ... but do not mix them together !!!

Alain