My very first professional gig in the mid-80s was on a classified ad-taking application for what were then called penny-savers, physical newspaper-like publications that were nearly 100% classifieds. Penny-savers would be distributed in boxes around urban centres and could be very profitable. Our app ran on MP/M, a multi-user CP/M variant. And when it was time to go to print, our code generated PS directly, there was no "printer driver" or abstraction of any kind.

We sold our customers two Apple LaserWriters each, because if one went down just before going to print they'd be screwed. We would print on both in parallel for speed, but could fall back to just one. And the printed ads? Somebody over in the print shop would cut them out in strips and then paste those strips up to be photographed for the printing press. We didn't have full end-to-end digital yet.

PS wasn't easy, but it was very grokkable.