The frustration with this was why both the wheel (PADI's multi-level planner) and the RDP were developed, and the research and planning on them occurred simultaneously in the early 1980s. I never knew anything about the wheel myself until I started my DM training and had to learn it for that. It never caught on.How was this handled in the pre-computer era? Did people dive more square profiles because they didn't get a time benefit for going shallower? I know there was a multilevel dive planner, but we didn't cover it in OW class for whatever reason.
I haven't been diving much longer than you. I got my OW certification using tables, and I got my AOW immediately after that in Cozumel, with the shop loaning me a computer for the deeper dives. I still used tables for the other dives, done off the shore. Then I went out and did my first dive with a dive operation, and it was a typical Cozumel multi-level dive. When we were back on the boat, I whipped out my tables to prepare for the second dive and saw that I was about as far off the tables as I could be. I stared at it in befuddlement. Then I realized the rest of the divers were looking at me in amusement. "It makes a decent Frisbee," one of them said. As soon as I got home, I got my first computer. That remains the only time in my life that I have seen anyone attempt to use tables on an NDL dive outside of training.