I sometimes wonder if the ability to search the internet to find any little bit of information has spoiled us to the point we are less likely to discover things for ourselves
I think if you're being payed to sit at a desk and teach yourself a pcb layout package (with just the manual and own experimentation) then that's wonderful. However, if, as I find, you're at a company who expect you to crack on with the pcb design from day one, and spend no more than a day getting stuck, then you do need more than the manual (or at least I do).
As I described, at one company I was designing an smps, and was still getting stuck with cadstar on day 5 of the job.......they sacked me. I had the design and schem done, but was getting stuck laying it out.
You speak of 20 years ago......those are good times, the uk electronics industry is a baron wasteland now compared to what it was then....nowadays, you can either do the job almost immediately, or you're out the door sacked.
This is why I find eagle, with all its support, very useful.
We all know where the uk electronics industry has gone.....uk 'entreprneurs' sold it to china..........companies that were once in Glasgow are now in Guangdong province. The UK 'entrepreneurs' first used the slaves of china to work at a loss, to completely outprice uk companies to price them out of the market, and now that uk companies are gone, these same entrepreneurs are upping the price of Chinese goods, though of course, the bigger money doesn't go to the slaves of Guangdong.
Anyway, speaking of china, virtually every Chinese pcb layout /schematic I've ever seen has been in eagle......no idea why.