I was always in show business but in many ways was not really of show business. I didn't move in show business circles, particularly, still don't do it.
Early Apple machines - don't know how to answer what it was like since there were so few tools. Just had to keep debugging by isolating a problem, looking at memory in the limited debugging (weaker than the DOS DEBUG and no symbols) patch and retry and then re-program, download and try again. And again.