Not to make the Google joke for the 1000th time, but how did devs make progress before Google?

Books!

that you couldn't download for free? madness.

We used books, lots and lots of books lol

Tons of manuals such as pc interrupts or teach yourself c++ in 24 hours. Best times ever.

@NoNameCode 10 years ago with planet source code for example. Or code project.

@NoNameCode lots of evolutionary prototypes, testing and code reviewing ( by printing the code out on a dot matrix printer and going over it with a pencil )

Spent too many hours doing that :-(

Prodigy was good. CompuServe was great. Internet forums were great. List serves were great. And books were excellent. Books still are excellent.

I compiled and wrote eight developers tips and tricks books during those years. I think they were helpful.