[kls]

One of the biggest changes is the dissemination of information about programming. Ask any developer from the 80's or 90's about the trip to Borders or Barns & Nobels and you will see a smile of nostalgia cross their face. Books used to be how one learned to program or learned new technologies. I remember owning a well worn Javascript Bible that was used by 8 or 9 programmers in the office as reference back when JS was new. Many developers spent several hours on the weekend at the bookstore pouring over programming books. Now with high speed Internet, video tutorials have trumped books for learning new tech. I really miss that experience.

[richardbrevig]

Learning to script back in 1997, this was completely my experience. Learned a little by looking at other code, but also had to buy a book to learn Perl. Among others, this was a main reason why I switched to PHP around 2000, because of the online manual making it easier to find out how to do things.

[bayonetz]

Yes, my trips to the tech section at Borders felt like how I feel now when I head for my favorite programming inspiration sources online (Hacker News, etc.).

Also yes, my Camel book (Perl) got passed around quite a bit.