We didn't have internet, but there were active Windows developer forums on CompuServe, BIX, and GEnie. I used to hang out on all of them answering people's questions and learning from other developers.
My usual monthly bill for dial-up access to the three services (mostly CompuServe) was around $300, close to $800/month in today's dollars.
Charles listed me in the acknowledgements for the first edition of Programming Windows as "the indefatigable Michael Geary." That was kind of fun.
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.
Home computers came with printed documentation and programming manuals, and later, SDKs came on floppy discs with their own extensive offline documentation. Also: lots of print magazines and books, and dialup connections into 'Bulletin Board Systems' existed long before the web became popular.
This all means that you often got stuck on a problem for days, only to eventually 'invent' a clever solution that's also been invented by thousands of other programmers ;)
I just noticed this after typing my comment about this very thing.
In addition to those TechNet CDs, we established some rapport via CompuServe or phone with specific Microsoft support people. Occasionally they would fix a bug we reported and send us rebuilt libs, or send us an internal Microsoft tool to try. That was a different era, obviously with a much smaller population of developers with less exposure to those who would support them.
Comments
I look at retiring developers and wonder how they built Windows applications with no internet access, MSDN on CD-ROM and Petzold's books.
The next generation will look at me with their AI tools and wonder how I built anything with primitive internet searches and StackOverflow.
We didn't have internet, but there were active Windows developer forums on CompuServe, BIX, and GEnie. I used to hang out on all of them answering people's questions and learning from other developers.
My usual monthly bill for dial-up access to the three services (mostly CompuServe) was around $300, close to $800/month in today's dollars.
Charles listed me in the acknowledgements for the first edition of Programming Windows as "the indefatigable Michael Geary." That was kind of fun.
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.
Home computers came with printed documentation and programming manuals, and later, SDKs came on floppy discs with their own extensive offline documentation. Also: lots of print magazines and books, and dialup connections into 'Bulletin Board Systems' existed long before the web became popular.
This all means that you often got stuck on a problem for days, only to eventually 'invent' a clever solution that's also been invented by thousands of other programmers ;)
I just noticed this after typing my comment about this very thing.
In addition to those TechNet CDs, we established some rapport via CompuServe or phone with specific Microsoft support people. Occasionally they would fix a bug we reported and send us rebuilt libs, or send us an internal Microsoft tool to try. That was a different era, obviously with a much smaller population of developers with less exposure to those who would support them.