In retrospect, the golden age was the pre-internet era. Some rose-colored glasses maybe, but as I remember it:

Paying for software was the norm, so it was more clear what the "product" was, and software writers had a direct incentive to write better software.

Updates could not be pushed out so you had to be pretty sure your code worked before you shipped it. Having to ship physical media to all your customers with a bug fix was very expensive. Any new release was a big deal, so you had to put some real thought into what features it should contain.

Stack churn was much slower. The feeling of constantly trying to keep up with a treadmill was much less.

Users, while often not technology experts, were a much more competent slice of people than the general public who showed up when they got internet service and a computer at home.

The only ads were in print in trade magazines or publications like Computer Shopper. Yes, people actually used to buy a magazine that was nothing but ads.

You're right about those things, but you're forgetting that we had no source control, and almost all software was closed source. You took what you were given and you liked it, and you developed strong attachments to particular versions of software which you clung to well beyond its use-by date (like Python 2.7). MS-DOS 3.3 forever!