So much of what's available is unstructured and disjointed, answering questions without any sort of method or system, not to mention frequently harmful in being

So much of what's available is unstructured and disjointed, answering questions without any sort of method or system, not to mention frequently harmful in being both written with certainty and incorrectness. While there were certainly fewer books in the late 90s and early 00s, they were well put together and comprehensive, often reference-style works. You could learn an entire programming language from having access to a single book.