I was doing Turbo Pascal, C and assembly back then. What I liked better, at least where I was and worked, what you had in your head was it. There were libraries, but, at least where I worked, not very many and it was tedious to get them, so you just rolled your own.
Focus was more (again, for me) on doing clever stuff vs, what I do today, integrating stuff and debugging stuff made by other people.
Compensation was lower than it is now (obviously?), but it was, similar to now, higher than most jobs. 30 years ago, unlike 40 years ago, you already could get jobs/work without a degree in software, so it was life changing for many, including me, as I was doing large projects before and in university which gave me stacks of cash while my classmates were serving drinks for minimum wage and tips.
I guess the end result these days is far more impressive in many ways for the time and effort spent, but the road to get there (stand ups, talks, agile, bad libraries/saas services, fast changing eco systems, devops) for me has mostly nothing to do with programming and so I don’t particularly enjoy it anymore. At least not that part.
Process reflected that; our team just got a stack of paper (brief) and that’s it; go away and implement. Then after a while, you brought a cd with the working and tested binary, went through some bug fixes and the next brief was provided.
One of the stark differences I found, at least in my country (NL), is that end 80s, beginning of the 90s, almost all people told me; you program for 5-8 years and then become a manager. Now, even the people who told me that at that time (some became, on eu scale, very prominent managers), tell me to not become a manager.
Process reflected that; our team just got a stack of
paper (brief) and that’s it; go away and implement.
Then after a while, you brought a cd with the working
and tested binary, went through some bug fixes and
the next brief was provided.
Oh my god I wish I could live in this world for a little while. Like you, I'm not sure I enjoy this any more.
Focus was more (again, for me) on doing clever stuff vs, what I do today, integrating stuff and debugging stuff made by other people.
Compensation was lower than it is now (obviously?), but it was, similar to now, higher than most jobs. 30 years ago, unlike 40 years ago, you already could get jobs/work without a degree in software, so it was life changing for many, including me, as I was doing large projects before and in university which gave me stacks of cash while my classmates were serving drinks for minimum wage and tips.
I guess the end result these days is far more impressive in many ways for the time and effort spent, but the road to get there (stand ups, talks, agile, bad libraries/saas services, fast changing eco systems, devops) for me has mostly nothing to do with programming and so I don’t particularly enjoy it anymore. At least not that part.
Process reflected that; our team just got a stack of paper (brief) and that’s it; go away and implement. Then after a while, you brought a cd with the working and tested binary, went through some bug fixes and the next brief was provided.
One of the stark differences I found, at least in my country (NL), is that end 80s, beginning of the 90s, almost all people told me; you program for 5-8 years and then become a manager. Now, even the people who told me that at that time (some became, on eu scale, very prominent managers), tell me to not become a manager.