[tomohawk]

When I started, TCP/IP was in the process of vanquishing other network stacks.

C or possibly Fortran or Pascal were the main languages. Although, skill with assembly was often necessary to work around buggy or non-performant compilers.

Information was shared on dialup BBSs - access to the internet was rare or expensive.

If you wanted to know something, you bought a book or got a job at a place that did that thing and learned from others.

x86 was just one of many possible hardware choices.

Companies were so desperate for people who could write software, I knew people who were hired right out of high school because they could program. They instantly made more money than their teachers.

Upon discovering UNIX and X11, a whole new world opened up. Learning that ecosystem has really paid off as I've been able to more or less ride that wave for decades.