No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s

In the 1980s, typing out programs line by line from magazine listings taught a kind of slow, deliberate focus that modern tools have largely replaced. Debugging meant comparing characters on screen against printed text, letter by letter. Today's autocomplete and AI assistants save hours, but that forced patience — reading every line carefully because there was no shortcut — built a deep understanding that's harder to come by now.