My problem with with trying to learn programming back in the mid-90's (my first attempt at programming) was that I couldn't find any books that I could really g

My problem with with trying to learn programming back in the mid-90's (my first attempt at programming) was that I couldn't find any books that I could really get into and truly learn from. I knew I should be able to figure it out, but things weren't clicking. I'm sure that had to do with the quality of bookstores in rural NH at the time, but still, it was horribly frustrating to drop a bunch of cash on a few books that seemed pretty good in the store only to get home and realize that after the first chapter or two I felt completely lost and hopeless. Fast-forward to my second attempt to learn programming ten years later in the mid 00's, and between the sheer amount of tutorials/ebooks/other random things online, I was able to pick it up very quickly, the way I always figured I should be able to. Part of that was definitely the shift to higher abstraction levels for a lot of things, but I firmly believe a large part was that I was able to much more easily find instruction that worked for me, rather than having to choose from just a few limited options. Because of that, I have no real fond memories of programming before google, and I owe all of my ability to the programming-with-google world. (That said, I have extremely fond memories of the communities on the BBS's I frequented back in the day!)