What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
I&#x27;m self-taught, and now in my 50s.<p>I started programming when I was 10, in 1976. In those earliest days of consumer-class computers, there wasn&#x27;t really a developed market for practical programming books. However, the manuals that came with software or OSes were quite well-written. There were a few magazines, too, like BYTE and Dr. Dobbs Journal, that published source code -- always the best way to learn!<p>It helped, too, that my dad was a programmer. I learned most of the basics about computer architecture, binary logic, algorithms, etc., from talking with him.<p>There were local user groups, though most of the folks were enthusiasts, not necessarily programmers.<p>By the early 80s, I was reading the C manual by K&amp;R and other books on practical programming, and trying things on my home CP&#x2F;M system (Heathkit H89). If I had problems (and I often did), I simply had to experiment, read more, think more, debug more.<p>I first got online around 1980 -- via dial-up BBSes, then the early Internet (ARPAnet), and USENET. While you generally couldn&#x27;t search for answers&#x2F;code the way you can now, you could browse, and you could certainly ask people who knew, or at least could offer suggestions.<p>Finally, I think it&#x27;s been an advantage that for most of my programming life, I&#x27;ve used Unix, and most of the versions I used included source, which is always educational.