Well, there are differences you must accept and others that are optional.

The VBA code window opens in a separate application window (that started in
A2000) and there are differences in how sub-forms and sub-reports are
interacted with in design view.

The bigger changes are if you stay with the default object model.  Access
97 uses DAO and all the newer versions use ADO by default.  You can choose
however, to remove the reference to ADO, add the reference to DAO and
continue to work pretty much as you have in Access 97.  Certainly this is
what you would likely want to do with maintenance on existing apps.  While
you might want to learn and use ADO for new projects, there would be very
little value in reworking an existing DAO application to use ADO.

There are new things that require a steeper learning curve if you opt to
use them.  You can create ADP projects instead of MDB apps to work directly
with SQL Server.  You could try your hand at DAPs (Data Access Pages) for
interacting with your data through a web browser.  XP (Access 2002) adds
some functionality for working with XML if you have any need for that.

Long story short... if you simply want to install the upgrade and continue
working largely the same as you are now, you can do so.  You will find that
unless you upgrade your hardware that developing in XP will likely be
slower than in 97, but that is true of nearly all software upgrades.