I'd like to think I've gotten better over my own 33 years. (and holy cow, have I ever.)
But really, I try to DM to the system I'm running. I'm not going to run BECMI or AD&D like I run 4e, and I'm not going to run Call of Cthulhu like I run Feng Shui.
More to the point, though, I don't think there's a monolithic 'back in the day' style to play to. And a lot of it is downright weird to modern gaming - for example, how players routinely brought characters from one DM's campaign to different DMs' games. I never really bought into this even back in the 80's, but I ran into it a few times in college during the 2e era.