30 years is a bit before my timeline, but the biggest difference I recall from around then is that books were the most important learning resource you had. In s

30 years is a bit before my timeline, but the biggest difference I recall from around then is that books were the most important learning resource you had. In some cases they were the only resource you had available. And interestingly, in many cases the books even came with media (often on gasp a floppy disk) that had some code samples, errata, and lessons to follow. What online resources that existed for programming at that time were few and far between and much harder to find help on. Programming videos were almost non-existent. Spending time in a bookstore and trying to find a good book to solve your problem was about the best strategy you had in many cases. Today, technical books still exist in the remaining bookstores of course, but the proportion of genuinely interesting books is much worse. Technical shelves are now filled with garbage mass market books like how to use your iPhone and the like.