Having been there per-2000, not really. It was not appreciably simpler, most of it was really plumbing (but maybe you were making up the pipes as you went along), and there were assholes abound.
I also feel that back then demand massively outstripped supply which created its own kind of stress as I felt I was working a lot more with much less experienced devs who just got into it because it good paying work, but they didn't really enjoy it.
Nowadays there seems to be a lot more software engineering skill around generally, and a big yay! to github and Stack overflow, and the thousands of developers who freely provide code/frameworks and knowledge to give all developers a leg-up.
It's good to no longer be in the thrall of the large software vendors (sun/apple/MS) to provide frameworks, tools & documentation.
