Ask HN: What was being a software developer like about 30 years ago?
I started my first dev job in early 1997 which is more like 25 than 30 years ago but I think the milieu was similar.<p>The internet was mostly irrelevant to the line of work I was involved in although it was starting to have impact. We had one ISDN 2x line for the entire office. It was set up to open on demand and time out a few minutes later as it was billed by the minute.<p>I worked on an OpenGL desktop application for geoscience data visualization running on Irix and Solaris workstations.<p>The work life balance was great as the hardware limitations prevented any work from home. Once out of the office I was able to go back to my family and my hobbies.<p>Processes were much lighter with far less security paranoia as cyber attacks weren&#x27;t a thing. Biggest IT risk was someone installing a virus on a computer from the disk they brought to install Doom shareware.<p>The small company I worked for did not have the army of product managers, project managers or any similar buffoonery. The geologists told us developers what they needed, we built it and asked if they liked the UI. If they didn&#x27;t we&#x27;d tweak it and run it by them again until they liked it.<p>In terms of software design, OO and Gang of Four Patterns ruled the day. Everyone had that book on their desks to accompany their copies of Effective C++ and More Effective C++. We took the GoF a little too seriously.<p>Compensation was worse for me though some of that is a function of my being much more advanced in my career. These days I make about 10x what I made then (not adjusted for inflation). That said, I led a happier life then. Not without anxiety to which I&#x27;m very prone but happier.