>how they built Windows applications with no internet access
internet access is a massive distraction, instead you used documentation that was pretty good. It meant you needed a bit more of a base in place before you started--you had to buy a copy of the developer SDK/tookkit for whatever you were working on--but you had so many fewer distractions after that.
(not that it played a large role, but inter network communications between companies was pretty standard during the time that Microsoft was writing Windows, starting with microsoft!ucbvax!decvax etc. type addressing, and soon .com/.edu was added)
I agree. We just buckled down and studied the documentation, which (as you note) was usually good and often excellent. Microsoft's small textbook about C++ was the best I ever encountered. While I threw most of my obsolete books away, I kept that one.
internet access is a massive distraction, instead you used documentation that was pretty good. It meant you needed a bit more of a base in place before you started--you had to buy a copy of the developer SDK/tookkit for whatever you were working on--but you had so many fewer distractions after that.
(not that it played a large role, but inter network communications between companies was pretty standard during the time that Microsoft was writing Windows, starting with microsoft!ucbvax!decvax etc. type addressing, and soon .com/.edu was added)