Comment by robmusial
6 hours ago
Like a lot of 90s kids my first language was BASIC via QBasic. After feeling like I had outgrown that I went looking for a "real" language to learn and landed on C++. The cost of Borland Turbo C++ 4.5 for a young kid, and my parents not being into computers so not keen on funding me, led me to ask for alternatives on IRC. I was told about [GNU/]Linux coming with a C/C++ compiler for free! I ordered a Red Hat CDROM from cheap*bytes and never looked back.
Had Borland not been so expensive or had the stranger on IRC known or told me GCC existed for DOS/Windows who knows where my career would be today.
In a weird way though I never used it, hearing about Borland Turbo anything still makes me happy because it reminds me of something I thought was unobtainium.
>my parents not being into computers so not keen on funding me
I feel this. I recall distinctly back in the mid '80s my mom, talking about my intense interest in computers: "It's great to have a hobby, but at some point you're going to need to figure out what you want to do for a real job."
And here I've turned my hobby into a living.
I feel so incredibly fortunate that I grew up and had a hobby in what turned into a lucrative career, and that my parents supported me as best they could.
Tandy CoCo 2. Followed by a 386 20Mhz where I graduated from Basic to Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++
My Dad uses to say "Stop playing around on that ^%$# computer and do some work!".
Well, I got the last laugh on that one.
> or told me GCC existed for DOS/Windows
DJGPP rhide and allegro that was my gateway drug!
Once Borland started its eventual decline, this was a really awesome way to do a lot of those same Borland-style things in Linux. Allegro in particular was great.
I still miss Turbo Pascal (and later Delphi) ... not so much the language, but the speed of feedback was unparalleled.
OMG cheapbytes. I also ordered a RedHat CD-ROM from cheapbytes. I used it to install Linux onto my roommate's laptop at Santa Clara - without his knowledge or approval in advance. Whoops!
Hilarious that we were both commandeering computers of those we lived with via a $2.99 copy of Red Hat. Good times!
I really wish I'd gotten Borland C++ for my Amiga, but it was $350 in 1990-91. Still years before free software would be usable at home and PCs were quite relatively expensive compared to now (I was blown away when I calculated the modern price equivalent of my A3000 - over $10,000).
The funny thing is that Borland initially had the opposite problem, Turbo Pascal was so cheap that businesses thought it couldn't be serious compared to other company offerings. Borland raising their prices was almost a marketing move.
This is almost identical to my journey. Except it was the fact that I (my parents) could not afford a copy of Visual C++.
very similar childhood. my old man was a fortran dev in the 80s and so i had access to a lot of the borland tools thru his work. what a time to be a curious mind, i miss those days very much.
The only reason we had a computer was my dad was a machinist/metal fabricator and was convinced by business partners that he had to stop using his graph paper and scientific calculator and NEEDED AutoCAD. We had the tablet, puck, everything. He sat down to use it once and went straight back to graph paper.
But this was a great boon to me because it gave me a highly spec'd 486DX in the early 90s.
Remember my boss got a 486 to replace his 386.
The side-by-side 'dir' command demo he did was pretty impressive.
Somebody down the chain got his 386 and somebody else got their 286.
I hung out on #C from 92-96 quite a bit. The most shocking part of your story was that people didn't recommend an ftp site where you could get anything you wanted for free.
Oh they definitely did give me FTP sites, I just didn't want to ramble too much. I think at that time I had a USRobotics 33.6 sportster and a shared line with the rest of the house. Downloading large-ish files even overnight was a no go. My mom was a school teacher and the thought of her missing a call from the district about a snow day or other calamity would have been a disaster!