More often than Bing? In the olden days you had to write a lot more stuff from scratch. This would be in a language that could be explained in a relatively con

More often than Bing? In the olden days you had to write a lot more stuff from scratch. This would be in a language that could be explained in a relatively concise manual. So everything you would need would be in that manual. You could learn from things others did with the same manual/hardware by seeing the end result, but the art required for that result wasn't open source, you would have to work it out yourself and RTFM as often as needed. Magazines were as good as it got. The knowledge to program wasn't easily obtained, for starters computer kit could cost many thousands. Computers weren't really networked back then either. Floppy disks were the distribution medium. Also computer screens actually flickered in glorious 1024 x 768. Plus they were noisy. You read your code in printouts side by side with the manual, probably hand-writing code before typing it in. Back then it must have been possible for someone to actually know a language such as 'C' (or BASIC, or an 8 bit assembly language) completely as in know all the commands and understand all the concepts. This would be learning by rote to a certain extent as the 1-2 manuals would be memorised to all intents and purposes. I don't know if that sort of mastery of a subject is easier to obtain today.