How much time and expertise did it take? Did automatically work on all OSs? Could person without tech background slap something like this in a weekend? Did it have accessibility built-in? Could you reuse it on web?
Yes, in 1998 there were full fledged IDEs which allowed for GUI development. Delphi, Visual C++, Visual Basic Powerbuilder, NeXT Objects,.... I would actually say that it was easier to develop apps in 1998 than it is now.
