Freehand still hasn't been beat, even after all these years. Never did like Illustrator, but like everyone learned to use it once Freehand bit the dust.

I hadn't thought about Freehand in a decade and now I'm angry at Adobe for killing it all over again. It never got in your way and let you fully focus on your work. Illustrator never lets you forget that you're using a tool to create things like Freehand did.

Is there some good summary somewhere? I remember having, ahem, access to both as a teen but Illustrator had more brand effect behind it.

This mid-'90s time capsule and the decade-plus of comments below it summarize how a lot of Freehand users felt about the program: https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/illustrator-v-freehand.html.

Mike Schuster, who by the way is a superb programmer.