Yeah, it's just much more efficient that way. (Sometimes when I had a bit of trouble recalling the product of, say, 8 * 7, I found myself doing things like calculating 7 * 7+7 to find the answer instead.)

Also, a professor I had at college for one of my computer-related courses said that the long division algorithm is one of the most complicated algorithms around and it's by far more complicated than any of the other algorithms taught in school.