The mid/late 90s were this weird time when people were printing things out like crazy. It was after the first cheap inkjet and laser printers came out. I must have printed out hundreds of Yahoo maps directions and other things at the time. I remember possessing lots of big three-ring binders filled with various manuals for programming libraries. At the time, printing was almost free, and email and web were still somewhat lacking in user friendliness for reading docs in the modem and pre-PDF ubiquity days. These two factors lead to this brief printing things out trend.

The printing thing stopped when online help got better and more ubiquitous. Now, I usually read docs on the web and only buy a book when I want to majorly invest in learning a new technology.