I got my CS degree in 1984 and did programming on my own from 1977. I'm still in development so I can be your time traveler. Yes and no? If you've taken the GUI

I got my CS degree in 1984 and did programming on my own from 1977. I'm still in development so I can be your time traveler. Yes and no? If you've taken the GUI, drag & drop components route I think you'd have trouble. Another big sticking point would be if you've only worked in languages with automatic garbage collection. My opinion is you need to have malloc and free, or the equivalent in assembly etc. ingrained in you to get it right, to make sure your routines free up memory no matter the exit points. Of course you could be a modern Linux C programmer using vi and you'd be their ninja rockstar on day one. Comparing the two eras I'd say you could do a lot less back then but you were expected to do a lot less. Standing up a database, using a connector to it in your language, getting input from the user to put in the database; 1-2 days now, weeks or more back then.