Learning to code, 1990s vs 2026 (opens in new tab)

I still remember the bookstore. I was holding a 600-page brick of a book on how to build Windows applications, trying to convince my mother that I really needed it. This was 1994 or 1995. A book was how you learned to program at that time. You took it home, you read it cover to cover, you typed the examples by hand, and somewhere along the way, the ideas sank in.From there, the tools for learning kept evolving. Printed books gave way to CD-ROMs and then to online documentation. Then came the ...