Bless you! You were at the vanguard of the creation of useful business machines which actually contributed to society. Contrast that with the today’s “developers” of cell phone “apps” created to enslave and indoctrinate today’s youth.
I have plenty of scars from the software / hardware wars. 16 years in corporate management; hired 125 talented individuals, mostly mathematicians & programmers. Our teams performed honest, productive work. We installed, debugged, & supported many systems for important businesses across the US, mostly in the northwest quadrant.
I was lucky enough to have the honor of attending graduate classes taught by McCarthy, Alan Kay (designed the original laptop computer; became an Apple Fellow), and Don Knuth – the legendary genius who created much of modern computer science.
Stanford was (& is) keen on developing algorithmic thinking.
Working at SAIL at the Beginning of it All was otherworldly. It was mentally invigorating to work closely with many brilliant, forceful thinkers.
How far we have come with computer technology!
In retrospect, it was all worth it.