Let's take the c64 as an example. First, you had to pull the right diskette from your shelf that contains the program you wanted to use, because all the progra

Let's take the c64 as an example. First, you had to pull the right diskette from your shelf that contains the program you wanted to use, because all the programs weren't in the same place. Let's hope you know where you put it. Then, enter one or more commands to load the program that, for purely technical reasons and lack of standardization, are different for each program (load first directory entry vs. load specific directory entry vs. load directory+list directory + load entry). Wait 10-20 seconds to load. Sometimes it was faster, IIRC because by default the 8-bit-parallel line to the drive had 7 lines unused and pushed bits in serial so there were "fast loaders" that just moved bits in parallel. Then, after loading the program, you had to start it (unless it was autostarting), again with an application-specific command (typically "run", but could be by calling a specific memory address like "sys 4096"). Many programs hat to load other stuff again and again because, well, 64k memory isn't a lot. Sometimes you had to flip the diskette over or swap it with another one. Let's face it: While today's software is sometimes ridiculously slow given the hardware it runs on, claiming that the 80s were better is pure nostalgia. Consoles of the time were better (I think the NES had 0,5 seconds from power switch to the game's first splash / title screen), but they used more costly ROMs instead of diskettes and were seriously hardware-feature-limited.