Ironically enough, the dev tools were there (and shitty) from the very beginning in the early 2000s, and they were never really improved upon. The biggest problem was that the code libraries were broken up into multiple (and not completely logical) modules and each module you incorporated into your app had to be digitally signed by a remote server every time you wanted to run your in-development app. The signing server was often slow (or completely down) so sometimes it would take 45 minutes to an hour just to test out a one-line code change. Sometimes I would just give up and go home because testing was literally impossible.

On the other hand, it was a great built-in excuse for fucking off. If my managers ever caught me napping, I would just say the signing server was down. I was careful never to tell them about isthesigningserverdown.com, which back in the day told you whether the BB signing servers were actually down or not.