At some point we started using Lightspeed-C (later named Think C) which helped a lot. The linker spent most of its time drawing icons on the screen. At first we used some C compiler who's name I don't remember, it was pretty slow. I used the XL and the other two developers could access the hard drive over Appletalk.
We had two 512K Macs and one Mac XL (a Lisa running MacOS) that had a small hard drive we all shared.
Just finding out what software existed meant reading ads or magazine reviews or a computer show. If you wanted to know what a piece of software did you had to buy a copy. Learning meant libraries, or magazines, or maybe a user group. There was little email (at my first job I had an email address outside of work but I only knew one person with one - my boss - and we sat next to each other at work) and of course no internet. I remember talking with a banker who upon hearing we were going to work on software thought we were making lingerie! The whole idea of software was unfamiliar to many. As it is today there were people who liked to invest in new ideas but unlike today many of them had no idea what we were doing. Like any young person with an idea I got people I knew excited and we got a group of investors together. I quit my job in late 1984 and then came up with the idea that became Trapeze. So what was it like back then in the dark ages? Quite different than today in many ways not so different in others. We worked on the presentation app Persuasion (for the author) and then spent 6 years working on Deltagraph for its publisher. It shipped in January 1987 but by the end of the year we sold it and then I started a new company to just develop for other people.
By 1985 I started my first company to develop and then sell a spreadsheet like application for the Mac called Trapeze. I started my career in 1981 working for 3 years at a defense contractor. What Writing - And Selling - Software Was Like In The 80's April 28, 2014