I feel this is taking extremely rose-tinted view of past. I don't think software was ever particularly reliable.
But then hard drives were invented, and suddenly computers could hold several orders of magnitude more mistakes. Demands on feature set grew. We started expecting to run more than one program at once and have them play nice with each other. Then we connected them to the Internet and a whole new world of mistakes became possible - and this is where we are.
But stuff like ... Borland TurboPascal. Was rock solid and fast.
Do I skipping loading the CD-ROM drivers for this one, or the sound card drivers?
Do I want extended memory or expanded memory or both or neither?
Running games on any non-PC machine (like the Amiga or Atari ST) generally didn't require any tinkering.
Of course this "broken mess" also led to a higher level of innovation in the PC world which eventually left the Amigas and Ataris behind, basically the original "move fast and break things" platform ;)
Agreed - but software was also markedly less user-hostile and performance-wasteful: though that was due to limitations of the time: e.g. you can't spy on users or require phone-home DRM without a good internet connection (not that DRM dongles were much better).
If there's one good thing that might come from the trend towards computers locking users out of kernel-mode it's that games and media systems will stop being able to install their own rootkits.
I winced