No they were better. Whether someone likes the style better or not (I do) they were FAR more visually distinct from each other which made it much easier to find the program you wanted to use.

Right now my dock is a soup of squircles. I have to scan multiple times to find icons even though I know roughly where they should be.

They aren’t distinct. They don’t stand out.

That was never a problem until last year. 40 years of Mac was fine. Then that.