There was little or no evangelism for a particular language/framework/database/stack. People just trusted you to pick the right tools to get the project done, without feeling the need to insist you look at the latest flavour of the month thing out there.
But mostly, I miss the fact that 20+ years ago, programming was still considered a professional, white collar role that engendered respect from the entire organisation. Nowadays, I feel that most coders are lumped together with "support people" and are considered nothing more than replaceable factory line blue collar workers.
That’s a very different experience than I remember. Macho culture dominated: assembler was the king, then C, then C++. LISP or Smalltalk or COBOL people hung out on their own and didn’t talk to each other. Java was a joke usurper at first. Perl, python, ruby were toys. Etc.
IOW language advocacy and flavor of the month were rampant in the late 80s onwards from my POV.
These days at least there is enough community for all of the major languages and even the minor ones.
Also I find programmers get a lot more respect now than they did in the 80s and 90s. Programmers can make $300k+ USD at a top Bay Area company today, and starting salaries are well over $100k. Often they talk directly to users - no handlers or analysts in between to shield people from the “strange programmers”. Attitudes have shifted. Though given your experience, I guess not uniformly.
But mostly, I miss the fact that 20+ years ago, programming was still considered a professional, white collar role that engendered respect from the entire organisation. Nowadays, I feel that most coders are lumped together with "support people" and are considered nothing more than replaceable factory line blue collar workers.