Well, we didn't waste as much time arguing about whether or not a question was on-topic or a duplicate of another, so we had a lot more time to just write code and practice.
What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
81–90 of 290 posts
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#82I used books. Then when I had web access, I used yahoo search and altavista. Then IRC, email, mailing lists, and ICQ.
I now use use books, duck duck go, IRC, email, mailing lists, Twitter, whatsapp, slack, and stack overflow.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#83When I transitioned back into programming from the arts, back in the very early 1990s, it was RTFM, Dr. Dobbs Journal, IRC, and picking the brain of every geek and "Computer Guy" that I met ('cept most of those Netware Certified guys, as that generally ended up in a disappointing exchange between a geek and a guy who got paid to maintain a proprietary network using a cookbook, who usually didn't grok much else, and, if they'd heard of linux, they pronounced it (wrongly) as "Lie-nucks".)
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#84Before StackOverflow? Not too bad. Without internet access, though? Much, much harder, or rather, slower - a similar level of information could be obtained but it took phone calls, bus trips to a reference library, etc. Other than that, you just had to figure everything out yourself from the user manuals and experimentation. Of course, back then computers were much simpler and user manuals were much more complete and…
I disagree computers were much simpler. If you wanted to play games, you had to struggle with IRQ, DMA, extended memory mode, smartdrive, config.sys, autoexec.bat, commandline ARJ, zip, rar, floppies or tapes, and so on. If you had Linux, you also had to regularly recompile kernel to make something work (for example a device driver). My pet hypothesis is that puzzle and turn-based strategy games were much more popula…
+1 for the magazine mention. A lot of what I learned from tinkering with computers back then came from magazine and the floppies (and later CDs) of shareware they tended to include.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#85I would make a joke about how everybody used to read books, but before SO there were forums and before forums there were mailing lists and newsgroups.
plus Perl was king so there weren't any right answers, or an infinite number of right answers I should say.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#86My parents' 80286 IBM PS/2 came with MS DOS 4.0 and a manual. I worked my way through the manual, trying every command. One day I tried RESTORE. This ended poorly, since it overwrote the entire contents of the 20MB hard drive. But on the plus side, I learned how to install an operating system that day, as I installed DOS again from the floppies. Fortunately, we still kept all of our files on floppies at the time, so nothing important was lost.
At any rate, that machine also had EDLIN and BASICA, and that was the start of my programming career. I didn't have any books on BASIC, and the manual was pretty scant when it came to information about BASIC. But I did have a friend who was into BASIC, and he pointed me in the right direction a few times.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#87Back in the day we had books and magazines. Computers used to come with books explaining how they worked and how to use the BASIC that came with them; there were programming books available for sale for skill levels from beginner to professional. Magazines often had program listings printed right in them; you could type them in or send away for a cassette or disk with the programs from that issue on it. There were magazines available for each specific computer type (Apple, Commodore, Tandy, etc.).
I know, I'm dating myself here, but man was it a good time to be a kid and learn how to program.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#88It's really not Stack Overflow that we should be asking about, it's Google.
Programming became a lot easier when you could just type a question into Google and it would find that someone asked the same question in some forum or newsgroup. In 2003 Google would always include results in a site called Experts' Exchange, which was basically an earlier version of Stack Overflow.
What was different, though, before Google, was that when I got stuck, I often spent a lot of time inventing (or guessing,) a workaround, and my workaround was often incorrect, fragile, slow, ect. In today's world, I'll often see the workaround show up on Stack Overflow first, and then a better answer show up, and then a better answer.
(edit) Another difference is that documentation is essentially annotated today. If the documentation is confusing or misleading, it's usually clarified in a stack overflow or some other forum. Before Google, if documentation was confusing, you were stuck guessing or hacking. That was very time consuming.(/edit)
So basically, before Stack Overflow / Google, there was no globally searchable database of questions and answers. You would get stuck on simple things for a long time, and move much slower.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#89Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#90You just hung out on IRC and mailing lists.
It was clumsier, but it worked.