I started working, after high school, in firmware (industry automation) on a similar Mostek Macro 80 (not a real one, handmade) with 2 8" floppies an 5" monochrome (green) CRT. In that company there was two bosses, the secretary and I, one boss was an ex Olivetti engineering that developed all the electronic cards (half-euro size cards with Z80), it was 1986. The cards was inserted in a rack, firmware was written in assembly, the ROM used was 4kB, the RAM 8kB (to store end user programs), For debugging we used a handmade console with an interface card to insert in the rack, it was possible to debug 2kB at a time copying the CPU card frmware into console in machine language, debugging was entirely in machine language (hex numbers). It had a 4 + 2 digit display (4 for the address, 2 for the code), 2 leds, one when the code was on ASM instruction fetch and the other for a single breakpoint, the keyboard was like the numeric pad plus hex letters. Then we bought a PC (286) portable (portable not laptop, but less big than the Macro 80, macro 80 was a cube of about 80cm). Portable because I have to travel where the machine was done, to debug the firmware on board, and when the machine was done I travel to the end customer of the machine. The portable was a 286 with 2 4.25" floppies, a 5" monochrome (amber) CRT. Then (at the end of '80) we bought 2 desktop PCs (386/286 I do not remember), one for develop electronic cards, we stop using maillard and used Ultiboard (paid) and OrCAD (stolen somewere), but most Ultiboard. In the while I learned C and C++ by myself. with the Z80 asm compiler it was possible to compile C firmware but never used it, because (the opinion of the bosses) it ate a lot of ROM.
Now I can work in any environment, I do not care a lot, expecially with desktop, I can work on CLI, but I no longer want to remember a lot of things (commands, parameters, ...) if I found something that make me fill good I use it and change only if I find something better (better for me, that help me in some way). On first impact I do not care if there are one, two or three panels, they are at to or at bottom, if icons are flat or 3D, if the time is on the left or the right of the panel. I care they are curstomizable and in easy way, without reading tons of document to make a marginal simple thing that has nothing to do with what I want to use the desktop for.
When I watch DE screenshots I can imagine the user habit, most of the time a short panel at the bottom with big icons is typical of a Mac/Linux user (more Mac), a full size bottom panel with menu in the left and icons, clock at the right is more typical for a Windows user. Is it good? Is it bad? It's this way, the most important thing is that you fill good and it's easy to configure.
