For more than a decade before SO existed I was searching the internet and successfully finding answers to questions. There were good sites and bad sites then, good sites and bad sites now. SO didn't change anything. If it didn't exist the information would still be out there and searchable through other sites.
Usenet/DejaNews (pre-acquisition) were my favorite incarnation but there's never been a time that the makeup of sites at the time didn't result in the right information being easy to get.
true, the info has always been there. what SO bought was ux. kind of like slackhq being valued at a bil even though irc/chat has been around for decades. and yep, usenet was great especially for older languages like c.
more recently searching in safaribooksonline.com has become my first step.
Usenet/DejaNews (pre-acquisition) were my favorite incarnation but there's never been a time that the makeup of sites at the time didn't result in the right information being easy to get.