[christophilus]

I was just starting pre 2000, but it was not much better. I had to deal with a legacy COBOL system. I had to write C++. VB6 was actually pretty great for doing quick plumbing. And C# + WinForms which succeeded it was also great. But in the end, I’m still solving problems today, just like I was back then. I still enjoy programming as much or more than I did then. Some super tedious things have gotten substantially easier, too, such as building telephony apps. I had to do things like that pre-Twillio, and I don’t miss it.

[knute]

In the early 1990s and early 2000s web development was a nightmare. Having to test not just in different browsers, but different versions of different browsers, because they had substantially different behaviors. There was no "Inspect element", JavaScript debuggers were entirely absent or incredibly crude. Getting a decent looking web page to render and function correctly across all the different browsers you supported was a real achievement. You spent most of your time fighting browsers, not making actual progress.

[gorbachev]

It was, but it was also much, much simpler. You couldn't shoot yourself in the foot as easy as you can now.

[christophilus]

Definitely. I generally wrote jscript and didn’t support non-IE. That aspect of things is miles better today.