I first started brewing in 1984 [IIRC], unless you were into the addiction at that time you can't even begin to understand how pre-stone age it was. For starters there was no internet, so any information that was available was extremely difficult to find, especially for those of us residing in the remotest hinterlands, and it was rudimentary and very limited in scope. Dave Line's "Big Book of brewing" was considered the bible as far as I could tell, reading it may give you a feel for the times. The only source I could find for suppliers was whatever was what was listed in the backs of the few books I could find. No homebrew clubs or LHBS unless you lived in a large metropolitan area, most of the ingredients came across the pond so they were anything but fresh, and folks like me were completely on our own, flying blind with no one or place to go to seek help or answers to WTF all my beer tastes like crap.
I had been introduced to homebrew in about 1978 by a friend who lived in Denver, and at the time I thought his homebrew was the best damn beer I had ever drank, except of course for Tooth's Sheaf Stout, which was about the only craft type beer I'd ever seen, and which I'd dearly love to have chance to try again today. So even though my efforts were a lot of fun to make and totally sucked to drink, I knew that it was possible to make drinkable beer at home. Looking back through the corrected lens of what I know now, most of the problems with what I tried to brew back then were 2nd rate, stale ingredients, my insistence on trying to brew lagers without temperature control, and of course incredible ignorance.
For the folks who weren't alive and of drinking age back then, the current world of craft brews simply didn't exist. Anchor Steam, Tooth's KB Lager & Sheaf Stout, Foster's Lager and Zonker stout were about the only non BMC beers we'd been exposed to, at least in this part of the world. If you'd asked my what I thought of IPA I would probably have asked which branch of government the IPA was in. And for the folks whose memories do not predate the interweb, I don't think it is possible for you to grasp how fundamentally different every aspect of our lives were then, especially if you were an unrepentant DIYer. I'm no lover of the Webworld, but I'd be the last to deny it's usefulness.
If you started brewing in the last 15 or 20 years, be glad that timing was on your side, if you started and stuck with it through the dark ages, my hat is off to you. I gave it up a couple years after first starting, not because of poor results or lack of willingness to continue trying, but because as with so many people, life got in the way for about 30 years. Now I have time and opportunity and am quite happy with the unbelievable improvements in all aspects of the pursuit, and with the fact that more often than not I make beer I like. I am also glad that I had my experience 30 some years ago, if for no other reason than that it makes me that much more grateful for the state of homebrewing today.
Cheers.