Books worked great. One thing to consider: before Stack Overflow (and the internet in general), it was harder to learn about fringe languages but it was also t

Books worked great. One thing to consider: before Stack Overflow (and the internet in general), it was harder to learn about fringe languages but it was also therefore harder for fringe languages to get the kind of business toe-hold that made learning them a financially-valuable expenditure of time. Try to imagine Ruby on Rails getting the traction it did in the time it did in the absence of a global community that could teach itself Ruby on Rails.