Remember when you had to go to a store to plunk down some serious cash to get something like a C compiler and an editor?
I wondered if that was still true so I checked Microcenter's site. The closest approximation was some web design software.
@hhardy01 Yes, and it wasn't until the 1990s when I was exposed to the GNU project.
I was still thinking Quick C was a decent editor / C compiler, if a bit underpowered.
Hey everybody, raise your hand if ran emacs or gcc on a home computer, even as late as 1987 ...
"... if [you] ran ..."
I didn't run gcc on a home computer until 1991, on an Amiga 3000UX. Although in 1987 I lived in a house with a dedicated terminal which we used to access our UNIX boxen at U Mich.
EMACS, no I'm an ed/ex/vi/vim person.
I'd gotten my first taste of VMS around then.
But yeah, anyone running this stuff at home until the mid 90s was unusual enough to be the exception that proves the rule.
Hell, even then it was unusual.
What hardware? What OS?
I remember going to the Wayne State Book Store to pick up a copy of Borland C++ 4.0 for $99 (which normally retailed for $499).
I can now buy any range of single board computers and run gcc for $5-$35 dollars, all told.
That is mind-boggling to me.
@craigmaloney I remember a three-way phone call with my dad to IT (?) at the company he worked for, trying to figure out what a quite-young me needed to graduate from built-in BASIC and move on to building .EXEs. I think he hoped he could get the guy on the other end of the phone to make a copy and send it to us. Didn’t happen. 😊
@zigg Heh. At least you got there in the end. :)
@craigmaloney I split the cost of CodeWarrior with a friend at MacWorld '96. I think we still paid over $100, even with a student discount. What a difference a few years makes.
@annika Indeed. But still; having the opportunity to get CodeWarrior for ~$100 was pretty cool. :)
@craigmaloney While my friends pirated copies of Turbo C, I managed to find an affordable compiler: Mix Power C. I could even get the source for the libraries. The debuger was a little weird, but worked well enough. I can't believe it is still around. Those prices are the prices I paid back in the day.
http://mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm
@cstanhope funnily enough I acquired the manual for this at a giveaway table just recently. And yes, I was floored they were still around. Almost felt like sending them some money to pick up the software just to see what they would send me.
@craigmaloney
EMACS came out in 1976
gcc came out in 1987