25 years ago internet was as good as everywhere at work and schools in the civilized world and was starting to ramp up in homes. CDs or DVDs were indeed still used for large sets of software and documentation, like stacks of MSDN discs. We even had distibuted source code version control, though it was often only synchronized accross the ocean (e.g. using SERI) overnight.

Personally i like the fact that there are interruptions at work. Working is often a social business and activities like rubber ducking, whiteboarding or live code explanation with living people works wonders for me. It should happen even more.

The people who were coding 8 hours a day, very often were writing yet another framework that they personally came up with to solve a problem, but without duscussing its requirements. More often than not they were making the wrong thing, making too clever things or over engineering.