There is a big difference between "having to" and "being able to" (if you want, like, find it convenient or feel so, for some use case)

Anyway unless you were a happy Genera user at that time, I would like what terminal did you use then with color highlighting, dynamic feedback, auto completion, transparency and the other features...

I used what Timex 2068, MS-DOS 3.3 - 5.0, CP/M, allowed me to do, until I was freed into Windows 3.x and Amiga 500, in 1990.

Until 2005, I also had to put up with using Xenix, DG/UX, Aix, Solaris, HP-UX, GNU/Linux via telnet as development servers.

Thankfully by 1996, X Win32 and Hummingbird came to rescue as my X Windows servers of choice, when possible.

As for all those features, you could already do most of them in 4DOS (1989).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS

It is like asking me about electronic typewriter features, when the World has moved on into digital printing.

Some of the authors in my circles still use typewriters. Some don't. That's fine. But people do enjoy going back to older techniques, sometimes.

I've seen many debates about the correct carriage return. The world does not move on uniformly.

Epaper based "typewriters" that "print" to a text file on an SD card are a thing. Not useful to me since I'm not an author but I can appreciate the desire to get rid of unnecessary distractions. It's the same reason I use a terminal emulator.

Now that you say it, I remember using command completion and color highlighting in the prompt with DOS4. I was liverated from the terminal a little bit before that.

On the other hand, I'm also sad that I don't longer have a computer interface like I had from 1995 - 2010, i.e. that everything is webflat and image-heavy. So weighing the timeline options, I'm not sure I'd pick the look and feel of the post-optimal time frame on a given day ;)