It was hard

had to drive backwards for awhile {pear}:exhausted:  

For every day driving, there is nothing to adapt to. The car drives the same.

If you get a lot of snow, they behave differently.

Kidding aside, they are great in the snow

my 97 caddy was front wheel drive with traction control and in Chicago winters it cut through the snow like a snowmobile

For me it was the opposite, I went from FWD to RWD:  easy to adapt to.

I grew up in New York. When I was just learning about cars, I knew the difference between FWD and RWD. We had a car that was FWD and then changed to a car that was RWD. It wasn't a pain because of the snow; we drove our cars carefully regardless of the drivetrain.

It's not a big deal. Front drive cars will tend to understeer more when pushed to the limit, which most people don't have trouble with since front-engine, rear-drive cars also tend to understeer.

What was difficult for people to adjust to back in the day was rear-engined cars like the Corvair that would oversteer rather understeer when pushed. (I used to have a '64 Corvair Monza and you could tell the rear was getting ready to whip around and hit you in the mouth when taking corners at speed.) The bigger and heavier the engine in the back the worse it gets and most people are just not prepared for that, it goes against their reflexes and muscle memory. I've read that during the war the Tatra 87, with its air-cooled rear-mounted V8, had high-speed handling so terrible that German officers were getting killed in them in droves.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/czech-car-killed-nazi-officers-than-active-combat.html

FWD is more forgiving in the snow and on wet roads than RWD is. The weight of the engine is on the drive wheels and they're also the steering wheels, so they grab better in adverse conditions. On dry roads, RWD has slightly better acceleration.

For myself, only 2 of the 6 cars I've owned since I started driving in 2013 have been FWD. I live in Ohio in the slush belt, and I honestly prefer RWD in the snow, but I like the challenge of keeping the rear end from fishtailing in bad road conditions. My mom grew up in Michigan and that's all she drove, back in the day. She taught me how to handle RWD cars in bad weather. Modern RWD cars like my 2017 Mustang have brake actuated limited slip systems, so they don't slide around like my 1999 Ranger or especially my 1979 Catalina will.  They all will slip if the road is wet from the rain, so you gotta watch the throttle going around corners, they like to slide if you give them too much gas. 

If you drive uphill in winter conditions, take snow chains in FWD.