[timthorn]

> And you needed it in your head, because finding the information you needed in the massive single document man file reference was a pain

That's what the O'Reilly books were for, especially the Nutshell series.

[jghn]

I remember capturing every password at my university via "methods". Because we had a printer quota. In the summer when everyone was gone I printed out all the man pages (all the mans, the system libraries, etc) so I'd have a nice reference book. I made sure to make it so no one was charged any money.

The one thing people can't possibly fathom if they started coding after the mid-late 90s was how much we relied on the printed medium.

[chx]

I still remember when we measured the documentation IBM shipped with the mainframes not in pages but in yards it occupied on the shelves. It was a lot.

[cafard]

Oracle used to be hard on your lower back, within the last 25 years.

[fuzztester]

The Unleashed and Bible series of books come to mind. Waite group or Sams or so, publishers.

Rather Waite-y.