The single largest hurdle for learning on your own is knowing the right questions to ask and how and where to ask them. Sites like HN and SO are great but it's a matter of finding them (and neither SO nor HN have existed for very long).
(and btw I didn't downmod you)
That's an interesting point, though pre 2001-ish I'd suggest this was easier. Usenet was the obvious destination. Groups like comp.lang.c, comp.lang.basic.misc and rec.game.design were popular and easy to find. Nowadays, there are 1001 different sites (many with poor traffic) for every topic imaginable.
Sadly, Usenet seemed to fall on its ass and be usurped by the Web somewhere between 2000 and 2003. A shame, that.
I'll consolidate our discussion into this one thread, in saying that I did use the internet to learn but I used it rather poorly. My Google-fu was rather terrible when I was younger. Tackling a large subject like programming was not easy for me when I basically had no footholds or easy ways to enter that body of knowledge.
I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to learn how to program without the internet though I think that as we build more powerful consumer-grade computing systems, the hurdles involved in getting into programming get higher and become more numerous.
Personally, the hard part was getting good documentation, though my parents' 286 came with a manual on GW-BASIC, which was included. I also managed to procure some BASIC documentation at a garage sale.
Basically impossible to learn computer science, though, except by trial and error. I just did things ad hoc. Experience teaches you how not to do things, but slowly.
This is a good point. I'd been coding for over ten years before I was even introduced to the (actually rather important) concept of algorithmic complexity! If I'd taken CS in university, that wouldn't have been the case. Now, though, it's possible for even novices to be introduced to these topics online (depending on who they're talking to).