>Unless you had a shell account or ran Linux or some sort of Unix you had to _pay_ (or... not pay) to get access to a C compiler.
That was actually how I got my introduction to nix. I was taking a c++ class in highschool, and I was mad that I couldn't compile my homework without paying for borland. Someone pointed me to g++, and I actually got a shell account with the university of colorado (it's wild to me they would give those away for free!). I kept pestering the admins about installing this or that, and they told me 'hey kid, why don't you install linux on your own* machine and then you can install whatever you like.
So I went and installed redhat on an old computer. Free compilers for basically every language in existence, and an entire OS worth of source code, heaven!
That was actually how I got my introduction to nix. I was taking a c++ class in highschool, and I was mad that I couldn't compile my homework without paying for borland. Someone pointed me to g++, and I actually got a shell account with the university of colorado (it's wild to me they would give those away for free!). I kept pestering the admins about installing this or that, and they told me 'hey kid, why don't you install linux on your own* machine and then you can install whatever you like.
So I went and installed redhat on an old computer. Free compilers for basically every language in existence, and an entire OS worth of source code, heaven!
The rest as they say, is history.