Back in the day, in the US at least, the magazines were filled with "type-in" programs. Listings of games and programs that you had to actually type in. Some of these were quite clever as coders learned how to produce the most "bang for the buck" getting cool results out of small code. One of my favorite type-in games is Crossroads from the Decemeber 1987 issue of Compute's Gazette. In Europe, it seemed that cover disks (or tapes) were more popular, though most of the US magazines offered the programs on disk for an extra fee as well.