Take all these stories with a grain of salt because one of the key elements for the things being better (at least for for me) 30 years ago is realistically the fact that I had 30 years less back then. So everything was new to me, I had a lot more time (I was at the end of the high-school when I started programming for money), and most importantly I had a lot more energy (and less patience, but energy made up for it).

Realistically, it was way harder. Tools were rough, basically just text editors, compiling was slow and boring, debugging tools super primitive compared to todays. And to learn programming back then, especially making the first steps you had to be really motivated for it. There was no Internet the way we know it today, so you had to dig a lot to get the info. Community was small and closed, especially to complete newbies, so you had to figure out all of the basic steps by yourself and to sort of prove yourself. In the beginning you had to really read books and manuals cover to cover many times - and then again later you'd end up spending hours turning pages, looking for some particular piece of info. It was supper time consuming, I spent nights and nights debugging and figuring how to call some routine or access some hardware.

On the other hand it had that sense of adventure, obtaining some secret knowledge, like some hermetic secret society of nerds that you've suddenly become initiated into, which to high-schooler me was super exciting.