I'm curious about how you all learned to program before the rise of AI resources like LLMs and sites like Stack Overflow. Did you rely mainly on books, classes, or maybe peers and word of mouth? What were your go-to resources for debugging and solving problems? I'm asking because I often use AI for basic questions now, and while it's helpful, I want to understand the foundations of coding education that existed before these modern tools.
5 Answers
Before AI and extensive online resources, education was much more traditional. Think books, classes, and a good old-fashioned mentor when you could find one. Many learned through trial and error in various settings, including schools.
Just to add more, we often had to RTFM (Read The Fine Manual). A lot of learning was hands-on, figuring things out through practice and by making mistakes along the way. It was a grind for sure!
We didn't have much choice but to rely on books, forums, and our own perseverance. You learn a lot from just messing around and seeing what breaks... and figuring out how to fix it!
Totally! The feeling of finally solving a bug after hours of frustration is unmatched.
Books were a godsend! I personally found O'Reilly books really helpful back in the day. The combination of written texts and experimenting with code was crucial to learning to program effectively.
For sure! I still have a collection of tech books that I refer back to, especially when I hit a wall.
A lot of us just read the documentation for the languages or tools we were using. It's a pretty solid way to grasp the basics of what you need to know.
Exactly, it's like having the ingredients without knowing how to create the dish.
Yeah, but how do you really connect the dots to build functional programs? Documentation often feels like reading a recipe without knowing how to cook! It’s tricky.
And it sticks with you much better than just getting a quick fix from an AI!