Cardano has improved dramatically over the years, here's a small post to detail where I felt we were, and how I feel we are now.

Before

1. Extremely steep learning curve for smart contract development

2. dApp development was slow due to limited tooling.

3. Users would sometimes wait over a day for a swap to succeed during periods of high demand.

4. dApp user experience was less intuitive compared to other platforms.

5. development tooling was available in limited programming languages hindering the ecosystem's growth.

6. Cardano’s development pace was perceived as slow, affecting the timely rollout of new features.

7. Wallet functionality & user experience was well below competition.

8. Lack of dApps building on Cardano.

Now

1. Smart Contract Development has tooling in recognised programming languages abstracting away Plutus specific knowledge, there is even newly created programming languages like Aiken which allow static typing and type inference.

2. dApp development is much faster due to various open source tooling available spanning multiple programming languages, and we have dApps launching consistently as a result.

3. Users wait on average ~10-20 seconds for a swap instead of days.

4. There is a great user experience across Cardano dApps, which feels modern & competitive. We are seeing this constantly improve now.

5. Catalyst and developers have contributed to open source development allowing tooling to span multiple programming languages attracting more developers & companies.

6. Cardano development has noticeably increased in velocity, it still definitely has room for improvement, but slow and steady wins the race.

7. Cardano now boasts a wide range of wallets with excellent user experiences, supporting mobile use and cross-chain interactions

8. Cardano boasts a variety of dApps now, building really cool, innovative real world solutions.