Well yeah, but you could also travel from England to Australia in the pre-aeroplane days. Today, you can do it in about 24-36 hours. Back then it took months. Isn't that an improvement?

There's a LOT of people here saying they would literally get stuck without SO. I also think that sounds a little bit more helpless than they think they are.

Ridiculous analogy. It didn't take weeks or months to figure out answers in the 1980s. It just took a little more thinking. I would go so far as to say, programmers were smarter in those days because they had to be.