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What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
31–40 of 290 posts
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#32I was visiting a local library 2-3 times a week and took out books like "The C Language" and SICP and slowly worked my way through them. It involved a lot of tinkering plus trial and error. Learning to program was less spoon-fed compared to today's norm and needed more dedication since gathering information and its synthesis took longer and was harder.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#33I was extremely lucky and stumbled across a particular IRC channel where some kind souls took pity on me and patiently answered my questions and gave me advice. I think it's fairly likely I wouldn't be a professional programmer today if I hadn't found that channel / those people. For me at least, there was a certain level of aptitude I needed before I was able to productively seek out knowledge on my own. The range o…
Similar for me. When I had near zero programming experience I picked out a boutique PHP CMS to build a relatively fancy blog. The CMS author was up on IRC for hours helping me shoehorn my rediculous project into his CMS and patiently explaining some very basic programming concepts to me.
Alex Suraci If you're reading this, thank you.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#34I learnt back in the BBC Micro era, when I could get books out of the local library. What I didn't have at that time was a computer - my very first programming had to be done on paper until I could get time on the computers at school.
Later I got a Spectrum; later still a PC. It was vital that these came with BASIC. Paying for development tools would not have happened. Eventually I acquired pirated copies of Turbo Pascal, Microsoft QuickC, and finally a legitimate but already obsolete copy of Borland Turbo C on seven 5.25" floppy disks.
Eventually I also got a modem and could gain access to such troves as the PC Game Programmer's Encyclopedia.
I think the main difference is that if you came up with a question you had to answer it yourself through research or experimentation. If you weren't very persistent, or weren't given the free time to do the necessary self-directed learning, you wouldn't get very far.
Modern knowledge is streamed to you in small fragments. Back then it came in lumps. Multiple-inch-thick lumps. Most of the books were pretty worthless, although the Peter Norton ones I really learnt stuff from.
It was also viable to set out to read the documentation you had cover-to-cover and go looking for interesting or useful things. These days there's almost too much, and it's certainly not linearly structured.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#35I spent a lot of time on local fidonet echoes to read and discuss programming topics. Books in .txt also happened from time to time on university BBS's. That was fun, but the early internet wasn't too bad too.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#36I learnt back in the BBC Micro era, when I could get books out of the local library. What I didn't have at that time was a computer - my very first programming had to be done on paper until I could get time on the computers at school. Later I got a Spectrum; later still a PC. It was vital that these came with BASIC. Paying for development tools would not have happened. Eventually I acquired pirated copies of Turbo Pa…
Similar story here. Although the only way I could get my hands on the school computers was intentionally swearing at the dinner ladies and being sent inside to sit in "the boring computer room" because the school had a strict policy of anti-technology in all subjects. They never worked my tactic out and thought I was just disruptive.
My knowledge came mostly from the BBC Micro Users guide and Advanced Users Guide initially. Eventually a dead relative, who I will be eternally grateful for their thought, left me a not insignificant amount of cash and I bought a then new BBC Master!
The books in question:
http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf
http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essen...
This eventually made way for a PC and eventually in the mid 1990s, Linux and then I discovered my father had a 1st edition copy of "Programming C" stashed away in a junk box somewhere. Oh and O'Reilly books. I had crates of them at one point.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#37There was this horrible site called experts-exchange.com (note the hyphen) that dominated search results, but IIRC they made you pay to see the answers.
Also from the same era was implausibly popular 'dynamic HTML' site Dynamic Drive, where users could copypaste semi-curated JS, which was responsible for some of the worst code ever to be deployed on the internet. I honestly don't know if it helped move web development forwards or held it back!
I once argued that the best thing that ever happened to web-development in terms of adoption was "view source" and how easily accessible it was.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#38You would visit the relevant bullet board, then post a question and get a response like RTFM. Then spend the afternoon staring into space
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#39You would visit the relevant bullet board, then post a question and get a response like RTFM. Then spend the afternoon staring into space
RTFM is why we have stackoverflow's people who answer. BUM!
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#40For a while I had a paid subscription to CIX (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIX), which was pretty handy at times.
It's worth noting that in the pre-web era the proliferation rate of new frameworks/languages/platforms was a lot lower, so once you had mastered a toolset you could stay relevant a lot longer than is the case today.