[dchichkov]

Interesting. I'm finding the opposite to be true. While it is easier to "get something working in Python in a half-an-hour", it didn't get easier "to release something that people want".

I'm sorry about your copy of Turbo C. Mine worked fine. Still enjoy pudb.

[rlonn]

Very good observation. While the programming tools and infrastructure have improved tremendously, so have user demands increased. To make money today, you can't release yesterday's functionality. SW development keeps moving to higher levels of abstraction, and not everyone likes that (I don't).

[Ma8ee]

Uh? Don’t talk about the pre- or early internet release process! Copy to floppy disks or burn CD, send by snail mail. For your little startup, hope you didnt miss any significant bugs before you payed for pressing 10 000 CDs at a quite significant cost. That was if you already had a customer. Get your software known? Well, I guess I’ll buy an ad in a relevant magazine.

[retsibsi]

But in many areas there was less competition by orders of magnitude, right?

[Ma8ee]

The whole market was much smaller. So maybe much less competition, but also much less market when only hobyists had computers at home and no one had smartphones.

The only "golden age" I can think of was the internet bubble when investors were crazy and threw money on anything that had anything to do with internet. Some kids made really good money "programming" HTML.

[retsibsi]

Fair points, thanks. (The question was only semi-rhetorical, as I'm only an observer rather than an insider, so I appreciate the genuine answer.)