Setting breakpoints to inspect local state means you have to catch every single exit. Back then, if you had a thirty second to one minute round trip to get back to the method you were inspecting, it became... frustrating. You probably didn't have to deal with those kind of start-up round trips in C++. With C++ you'd pay on the compile time.

If you wrote the code to have a single exit, the cognitive load was also typically lower, as the control flow could be thought of as one way in, and two ways out (return or exception). Good disciple also followed "the jolly good idea of Demeter" or whatever it came to be called; that being to only operate on the state (or preferably, values) passed in, where possible.