My (I was 8) first computer (not PC) I got beginning of the 80s when there were only BBSs with, at least in my country, not much programming info (pirated software, images, stories, text games, porn). I had a Basic, assembly and C book second hand and I bought the occasional magazine and listed/disassambled existing software I typed over from mags or downloaded. That was all that was needed: the rest you had to make up by reading in the manual or experimentation.
For my current hobby projects I use things like C, Forth, Lua: languages and libraries I can keep in my brain and do not need internet for to write things that work. Compared to commercial work it is especially the fast changing things (often changing for no apparent reason) like JS projects and/or some web/app frameworks that really require Google. Certainly the best practice to use a library for everything, even when unstable or rapidly changing, is a pain. It is often much faster to write things yourself without having to debug yet another library but you keep thinking you are wasting time and fall for it. With internet not available you have to find a solution yourself. Using a lib is usually the better solution but just writing things without Google just feels better to me.
Lua was my first programming language and it really is beautiful in that you can keep the whole language in your head and write entire programs without looking anything up. In fact - when I first started programming in other languages, it would essentially boil down to: write snippets in Lua, then google to find out how the syntax works in the other language, and copy it over.
Yeah that is why I did (and sometimes do) in Forth. Because it's terse and no syntax it is so rapid to just try little things out. Unfortunately MOST code I write does not benefit from that (web/app) but the embedded and game work certainly does.
For my current hobby projects I use things like C, Forth, Lua: languages and libraries I can keep in my brain and do not need internet for to write things that work. Compared to commercial work it is especially the fast changing things (often changing for no apparent reason) like JS projects and/or some web/app frameworks that really require Google. Certainly the best practice to use a library for everything, even when unstable or rapidly changing, is a pain. It is often much faster to write things yourself without having to debug yet another library but you keep thinking you are wasting time and fall for it. With internet not available you have to find a solution yourself. Using a lib is usually the better solution but just writing things without Google just feels better to me.