Actually, I remember being thrilled to have finally figured it out. We had been beating our heads against the wall (metaphorically) for a year, and I remember looking at the screen at the disassembly sequence and thinking, Oh my God, I think I've found it! It felt like making a major scientific discovery. (To be fair, I was only able to do this after others laid the groundwork for me by finding ways to reliably reproduce the problem. But I'm the one who spent hours single-stepping through assembly code before finally realizing what was happening.)

I also remember reporting the problem to one of the authors of the compiler (I think it was David Kranz) so he could fix it in the next version and him telling me that there wasn't going to be a next version because the funding for the project had been cut. There was no github in those days so the whole thing just faded into the mists of time, which is a real shame because the system really kicked ass.

The whole history of the project can be found here:

https://paulgraham.com/thist.html