And it got me thinking it would be interesting to hear what it was like to be a hacker in the olden days before internet came along to give us unlimited documentation and source codes in a .12 sec google search :)

Was anyone in here around in the days? And if so, what was it like? Was it better or worse? What do you miss if anything? I imagine certain projects could be more rewarding because you could fully understand every aspect of your programs, unlike today where one includes massive java libs on top of frameworks and stacks of other software :)