Lots of awesome horror/history/difficulty stories in here. I never used punchcards but appreciate everyone's experiences. My answer to the title is "because we

Lots of awesome horror/history/difficulty stories in here. I never used punchcards but appreciate everyone's experiences. My answer to the title is "because we had more time". Computer programs were doing such basic stuff that had such incredible value that we could take our time to build good domain models, in our heads and on paper. Most (?I think?) programmers acknowledge (in theory) that the real work is not in writing the code, it's understanding the problem, making sure the solution solves it acceptably, and creating domain models and architectures. Yet all we see are the tools, and when we see a stone age chisel we forget that it's the thought that matters.