On one hand, yes, 1st edition was designed as just a dungeon crawl. I want to say that it was just like a game of gauntlet, in that you don't need to know the "why" of anything. And that's totally fine if that's what your into. Later editions ARE much more focused on the "why" of it all.
But from the sounds of it, (I'll listen to it later to make sure) I think that guy just doesn't like role playing. Which is also perfectly fine. There are a lot of tables that play like Matt Mercer's games, where they are very heavily story driven and everyone stays in character and narrates their attacks and spells. But then you have Matt colvile's games where no one does any of that. It's a tactical game, no one is ever in character, no one ever narrates anything (other than the DM to tell the players what's going on). When they cast fireball, they just go "I'm gonna fireball them. 28 fire damage, half if they save."
That's all extraneous stuff that you can do in 1st edition if you want. There's nothing STOPPING players or the DM from doing that, just like there's nothing FORCING people to do it in 5e.
Fyi, revivify is basically a defibrillator. If a player dies, and the party has access to that spell you have a minute to use it. It's generally a combat spell or JUST AFTER combat. If they don't use it within a minute after death, it auto fails. It also costs 300gp worth of diamond dust. A diamond won't work, it has to be diamond dust specifically. In the game's that I play, death is a pretty big deal. Diamonds are rare and are hoarded by the 1%. On top of that, even if you get the materials, there is a process to the spell and if you don't roll high enough, the spell fails, consuming the materials. The DM has a Homebrew rule where Everytime you fail a death save it permanently raises the DC on any future raise dead spells cast on you.
Honestly at the end of the day, you can play whatever game however you want as long as everyone at the table is having fun, who cares? If you want death to mean something, then play with a Homebrew rule that revive spells don't exist. If you don't want to RP, then don't. You know? The editions, in my opinion, have little to nothing to do with that kind of thing since the rulebook themselves say to use or not use any rule you want