Depend on what you consider to be computing and what are golden days. Computers were not so widely available. In my country only Universities and big companies had them. Magnetic tapes and punch cards were used for data entry. In the 70s there were no personal computers. In 80's Spectrum, Commodore, Amstrad, Amiga, Atari and some other local computer brands entered the schools and homes. Companies were mostly using "dumb terminals".

If you where in computers then and if you worked on them you were possible on the forefront. Internet was still a new thing. Before it we had BBSs as places where we would gather.

Most of the knowledge was in books and magazines. They were hard to obtain.