Again this is not about contemporary computing or computer technology level in general, as I have already made clear. What is good or bad design for general computing is independent of those things, it is timeless. Why do you keep referring to some arbitrary “modern computing” as if that is somehow relevant when word-size in particular is a design decision that is not really dictated by technology level? It is often possible to compromise on other aspects of the design in order to have the width you want.
What you mean to say is “you don't design any general purpose system with 8-bit words.” but you won’t because it would undermine your whole argument.
> But the designers of early micros did need to limit themselves,
It would have been more difficult but not impossible to create an IC with a larger word-size in the early 70s. The 8-bit word size was not entirely chosen for technical reasons but also because they were targeting a specific market, one that did not have to meet all the demands of general computing and one for which the general computers were ill suited so this made the most sense. Would you really not say they were designed for and are better suited for the subset of computing applications that is called “embedded” computing? Don’t forget that most of them were designed before the desktop computer market existed and were never intended to be used that way. You can force them to be more than what they are (and people did) and pretend that they are but it doesn’t mean you should.
> But calling the elements which were good enough for the second wave of the computer revolution completely impractical is also absurd to me.
Design concessions which are intrinsically bad, awkward or inappropriate do not become good because it “still worked” or succeeded in a particular market. Not that it counts for much since those computers were not marketed in the same way or purchased for the same reasons. You say it was “good enough” but a lot of people didn’t think so but I guess most of them are dead now (like Wirth). The word-size was not a selling point, and only not enough of a hindrance to upset the novelty of the overall product. What it takes to introduce people to electronic computing is not the measure of general computing.
What is absurd is people like yourself insisting those particular machines, out of all machines, should be used to inform us as to what is reasonable for general computing when, considering the context of their creation, it is completely unwarranted.