Google up the Joel Spolsky 12 questions about software development from about a quarter century ago and the answer to most of the questions was mostly no.
No version control means merges were ... problematic at best, so you developed software without merges, branches, or pull requests, and surprisingly you can run a pre-2K economy pretty well off software written that way ... People tended to own a file at any given time and that meant we organized files along project tasks. We didn't have "no version control" we just didn't use version control tools because none had been invented, well, maybe RCS or CVS but nobody used that outside academia. We could still use backups and restores if we needed an old version. Also all filesystems had something.c, something.c.December.12, something.c.old, something.c.old.old.old, and something.c.bobs.copy. Often source code would entirely fit on one floppy disk so you'd just have a disk with a name and version written on it, and that was your "version control" if you had to review version 1.3 from the past. Also network directories with zip files named projectname-1995.03.12.tar.gz
One step builds were theoretically possible, "make install" was old stuff 30 years ago, but in practice, unit testing and distribution and approval processes made it simpler compared to now. Not every platform language and technology used makefiles, of course.
Everyone had quiet working conditions 30 years ago compared to "open office" so productivity was higher. Things are better now with full time remote.
Some of the old questions are kind of invalid, instead of the best IDE/compilers money can buy, all that stuff is generally free now.
Another eliminated question: As an industry "hallway usability testing" has been eliminated from the profession. There are too many middlemen "project manager" types who get a salary to keep programmers away from users. When someone's salary depends on preventing enduser input, you're not getting enduser input as a programmer. Maximizing enduser happiness is no longer the most profitable way to sell software, so goals are a lot different now.
> Some of the old questions are kind of invalid, instead of the best IDE/compilers money can buy, all that stuff is generally free now.
I wouldn't say this question is completely invalid now, it's just evolved from IDE/compilers to SaaS software. You can use open source equivalents and/or host your own, but using clouds (AWS/GCP/Azure) and well-supported full-featured SaaS softwares like slack, sentry, ngrok, readme, postman, intercom, mixpanel, notion, asana, netlify, figma, zapier, etc. can save your team hundreds of hours of frustration...
I use and like asana, but I assure you it is not free, my company pays a lot for that. I think we get much more value than it costs, but that doesn't mean the cost is zero, I think its nearly $200/yr/seat maybe more. Those products have a drug-pusher business model where the first hit is free then the invoices start rolling in.
No version control means merges were ... problematic at best, so you developed software without merges, branches, or pull requests, and surprisingly you can run a pre-2K economy pretty well off software written that way ... People tended to own a file at any given time and that meant we organized files along project tasks. We didn't have "no version control" we just didn't use version control tools because none had been invented, well, maybe RCS or CVS but nobody used that outside academia. We could still use backups and restores if we needed an old version. Also all filesystems had something.c, something.c.December.12, something.c.old, something.c.old.old.old, and something.c.bobs.copy. Often source code would entirely fit on one floppy disk so you'd just have a disk with a name and version written on it, and that was your "version control" if you had to review version 1.3 from the past. Also network directories with zip files named projectname-1995.03.12.tar.gz
One step builds were theoretically possible, "make install" was old stuff 30 years ago, but in practice, unit testing and distribution and approval processes made it simpler compared to now. Not every platform language and technology used makefiles, of course.
Everyone had quiet working conditions 30 years ago compared to "open office" so productivity was higher. Things are better now with full time remote.
Some of the old questions are kind of invalid, instead of the best IDE/compilers money can buy, all that stuff is generally free now.
Another eliminated question: As an industry "hallway usability testing" has been eliminated from the profession. There are too many middlemen "project manager" types who get a salary to keep programmers away from users. When someone's salary depends on preventing enduser input, you're not getting enduser input as a programmer. Maximizing enduser happiness is no longer the most profitable way to sell software, so goals are a lot different now.