Borland C++ came with 5 thick books as a reference. It was great. Powerbasic came with a big book, part tutorial, part reference. Schneider CPC had a big progra

Borland C++ came with 5 thick books as a reference. It was great. Powerbasic came with a big book, part tutorial, part reference. Schneider CPC had a big programming book with it. So it wasn't bad at all! When you extended your programs with stuff like mouse-support advanced graphics, you read through the readme.txt that was delivered with the library (the libraries could be bought, were freeware, came from your friend or were delivered on magazine-disktettes). Of course, getting help when unexpected problems popped up, was much more difficult without the internet. But then again, you were usually not mangling with a bunch of languages like (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, Typescript, Angular, React......) but were rather stuck with one programming language that you used for everything. Basic, Turbo Pascal, C, C++... you used one of them for many years as the average guy. So after some time, you got a feeling for it and could work around problems.