It's been good to me (my first home computer was a Z80 with 768 bytes of RAM, my first pro job was to go onsite and sort a blown bulb in a paper tape reader - that should say how grey :) ).

Punching in and out isn't so bad (I've done it), it's probably gone out of fashion because then people would get paid for all the hours they work :)

What seems wrong nowadays is how exploited workers are (and not just programmers).