Compared to today, in the 1970s and 1980s some things about programming were harder and some were easier. Back then, computers were amazingly slow and limited, by modern standards, so it was much easier to understand how they and their comparatively tiny operating systems worked. But coming by that understanding could be difficult. There was no internet, no Stack Overflow, no GitHub. Just books, magazines, and driving to nearby colleges to meet with other computer nerds in so called user groups. Another challenge was that computers back then were so slow and so limited that to solve what today would be considered easy programming problems often required you to invent a succession of clever hacks just to fit your ideas into such a miniscule computing vessel. (One example: https://blog.moertel.com/posts/2013-12-14-great-old-timey-ga...)
In sum, getting started in computing was probably easier back then because you worked in such a small, simple computing environment. But, compared to today, the difficulty ramped up rapidly with the complexity of the problems you wanted to solve. At some point your solutions would run into the limitations of the machine, and then you had another problem to solve. That made it hard back then.
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Compared to today, in the 1970s and 1980s some things about programming were harder and some were easier. Back then, computers were amazingly slow and limited, by modern standards, so it was much easier to understand how they and their comparatively tiny operating systems worked. But coming by that understanding could be difficult. There was no internet, no Stack Overflow, no GitHub. Just books, magazines, and driving to nearby colleges to meet with other computer nerds in so called user groups. Another challenge was that computers back then were so slow and so limited that to solve what today would be considered easy programming problems often required you to invent a succession of clever hacks just to fit your ideas into such a miniscule computing vessel. (One example: https://blog.moertel.com/posts/2013-12-14-great-old-timey-ga...)
In sum, getting started in computing was probably easier back then because you worked in such a small, simple computing environment. But, compared to today, the difficulty ramped up rapidly with the complexity of the problems you wanted to solve. At some point your solutions would run into the limitations of the machine, and then you had another problem to solve. That made it hard back then.
But it also made it fun.