Comment by nl

I was there.

It's mostly rose tinted glasses.

There were some amazing feats. But it was slow and frustrating. Like you wouldn't believe how long things took.

In the 90s most technical documentation was in actual physical books. If you wanted to learn something you had to order and buy the book (and Amazon wasn't a thing everywhere!), and it would take weeks or months to arrive. Or you did inter-library loans (which were amazing but also took weeks).

Or you relied on magazines which had a publication cycle. Writing actual physical letters about a program that was written out in the magazine was a thing.

When I got internet access in the mid-90s I remember emailing someone to ask about mirrors of their documentation project because I didn't want to use up their bandwidth.

I'd never ever want to go back. Bring on the future!