Or the library! The GIF spec was published in a magazine IIRC. I wrote a GIF viewer that supported CGA, EGA, VGA, ... displays.

The library had some things, but man things were moving so fast in the late 80s early 90s that you often had to buy the books you needed directly; because by the time they appeared in the library you'd be on to something else.

The right magazines were worth their weight in gold back then, for sure.

Oh, you just made me completely melancholic with that atmospheric description! Makes me miss these times a lot. The abundance of information is truly a blessing, but also a curse.

Or the “Computer Literacy” bookstore in the Silly Valley.

The MSDN library CDs were indispensable for Windows developers in the 90s. Amazing resource all at your fingertips! What a time we were living in!

A pirated copy of Visual Studio 2005 started my career.

We didn't have internet at home, and I was still in school, so the Knowledge Base articles on the MSDN CDs pretty much taught me.

God damn, I miss those days!

The O'Reilly Cookbooks were always the best.

I still have most of my dev books. I figure if I ever get a huge bookshelf they'll help fill it out, and give the kids something to talk about.

Yeah it was huge for me when books started to come with CD-ROM copies (c. 1997?) and I could fit more than one "book" in my laptop bag.

My go-to was Softpro Books in Denver. I would scan the shelves at B&N and Borders too, just in case, but Softpro had a much better selection.

Or to Computer Literacy bookstore. Each time I attended a conference in the Bay Area I made sure to drop into their store in San Jose to spend hours poring over the multitude of recent books on all the new stiuff happening in computing. I then had to lug 3-5 heavy books back on the plane with me. Then CL opened a store near me (Tyson's Corner in northern Virginia) which I visited at least weekly. I musta spent thousands on books back then, especially from O'Reilly. The world of computing was exploding and just keeping up with it was a challenge but also a major blast.

No source on the changes afoot then in computing was more compelling than WiReD Magazine. Its first 3-5 years were simply riveting: great insightful imaginative stories and fascinating interviews with folks whose font of creative ideas seemed unstoppable and sure to change the world. Each month's issue sucked all my time until it was read cover to cover and then discussed with others ASAP. That was a great time to be young and alive.

But Wired wasn't alone. Before them, Creative Computing and Byte were also must reads. Between 1975 and maybe 1990, the computing hobbyist community was red hot with hacks of all kinds, hard and soft. No way I was going to take a job that was NOT in computing. So I did. Been there ever since.

Awesome to see CL listed here ... worked at computerliteracy.com which eventually became fatbrain.com. Good times!

I miss those days. The books weren't perfect but I feel like enough quality was put into a lot of them because it was hard to errata a print run. Of course there is a lot more information out there for free nowadays but it's harder to sift through. I think the nicer thing is that eventually you'll find content that speaks to you and the way you learn.