I started my professional programming career in the Windows 3.x days. Some things that come to mind: * The web solved the software distribution problem. There

I started my professional programming career in the Windows 3.x days. Some things that come to mind: * The web solved the software distribution problem. There were some pretty good tools for building GUI apps in the 90s but the tools for getting software to the customer sucked. Complex installers, no autoupdates, "DLL hell" incompatibilities. * There never really were any great tools for building cross-platform GUIs. You built for Windows on x86, that was it. Widgets were shipped as binary COM components. Now you need to be on multiple OSes, multiple hardware architectures, and multiple form factors. VB wasn't going to give you that. * Formatting text sucked. Actually, formatting in general sucked - the RAD GUI builders built awesome fixed-size dialogs, but now screens vary from watch-sized to wall-sized. Embedded HTML components really made layout easier... and once you start putting things in HTML, it tends to take over. * All those pretty 3d effects in Win 95 UIs? Those were a bitch to get right. Hours of trial and error drawing extra lines of black and white and grey pixels. It looked good but it was a lot of effort that would have been better spent building real features.