This is what you’d run across in codebases before the internet, let alone Stack Overflow.
People didn’t have code to copy and paste — so they randomly wrote it like monkeys until it worked based their understanding of one page of a manual, which was literally the only documentation or description anywhere of how the system they were working with worked.
Add to the mix bug reports like, "This worked on the Gateway when the Epson was freshly plugged into the LPR port but crashed after the Epson had printed 5 pages. If we remove our sound card, then no more problems..." Microsoft's strategy was to support legacy and buggy hardware -- this reduced friction for OEMs and helped expand the market, but it also caused a lot of trouble.
People didn’t have code to copy and paste — so they randomly wrote it like monkeys until it worked based their understanding of one page of a manual, which was literally the only documentation or description anywhere of how the system they were working with worked.
Source: I was there :)