[specialist]

To my knowledge, yes. But noob me was only aware of PC-based software. There were probably more options on beefier hardware (workstations, minis, mainframes).

> making it MUCH more pleasant to do GIS

Totally. Back then, everything was all but bespoke. Almost zero interop. It was a huge hassle. Now GIS can be just a feature set on top of a proper database. Something like PostGIS was inconceivable to me back then.