Do people really learn _only_ from SO? I mean sure, it can solve problem at hand but learning a new language or technology? I don't see how it could compete with books in any way
What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
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Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#92The first six months or so that I used Linux (1998), I only had a winmodem for my parent's cheap tower (333Mhz Celeron I think; the kind you got for free if you signed a 3 year dialup contract). I taught myself to program based on examples from a book and documentation that was included with man pages, program source code, and long-form documentation (often found in -doc packages). The book was good for basic syntax…
I may be mixing up the years but in '98 I think a 333Mhz Celeron wasn't necessarily cheap. Not top of the line for sure, but also not your average dumpster find.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#93Frustrating because most searches would link to Experts Exhange - which looked like pretty much like Stack Overflow behind a paywall.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#94You had to spend many hours reading lots and lots of other people's code. You still do, but many people seem to find that distasteful. I don't know what they're bitching about because it's MUCH easier to find and read other people's code these days than it used to be, with github search and google.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#95You probably wouldn't believe, but we used to read assembly code in books and magazines and wrote resident programs for MS-DOS, used to load custom bitmap fonts to imitate the Norton Utilities fancy UI and stuff like that. I'm an oldfag, you see.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#96For me, which was just before stack overflow, it was dodging and weaving through forums and getting grilled on rather it was a homework question or someone copy and pasting the forum FAQ about searching the forum, etc, before posting.
Also, one big reason I think PHP was my go-to was the easiness of the manual (http://php.net/function_name_here)
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#97It was a lot easier in many ways.
You bought books or got training, most of which was accurate and good.
Now you read random opinions and have little idea how good the advice you find is.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#98It'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,…
Pretty much this, before stack overflow forums were very popular for asking questions, so you would traverse forums finding someone who's asked the same question as you.
Although half the time their question wouldn't be answered.
I find Github to be just as valuable today btw, whenever I search for a problem the top result is a github issue with many comments already on it (and sometimes a workaround)
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#99The first six months or so that I used Linux (1998), I only had a winmodem for my parent's cheap tower (333Mhz Celeron I think; the kind you got for free if you signed a 3 year dialup contract). I taught myself to program based on examples from a book and documentation that was included with man pages, program source code, and long-form documentation (often found in -doc packages). The book was good for basic syntax…
I may be mixing up the years but in '98 I think a 333Mhz Celeron wasn't necessarily cheap. Not top of the line for sure, but also not your average dumpster find.
I remember the CPU itself was like $35 USD and could easily overclock to 415MHz. It and the Celeron 300a were some of the best bargains ever in computing due to a binning oddity on Intel's part.
But he's probably talking about the cheap eMachines that were sold with rebates along with dial up. They went for something like $300 iirc.
I had a nearly identical experience to the grandparent post, except I would build/upgrade my computers with whatever parts were cheapest. I also remember there were a few services that would mail you a CD or 2 of your favourite distro for $5 which was amazing if you lived somewhere with terrible phone lines/no ISDN.
Re: What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
#100It'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,…
I miss those simple naive days of the unhyphenated internet, when you could find the answers to difficult questions on ExpertsExchange.com, and order tools that were mightier than the sword from small bodies of land surrounded by water on PenIsland.com.