- I got C for free on the first Unix systems the polytechnic I was working for bought - a desktop, but still a multi-user system. We had it connected to VT100 compatible terminals via the poly's WAN that anyone could connect to.
- Desmet C on the IBM PC. I can't remember the exact price, but much less than 100 GBP, otherwise I couldn't have wangled the expense.
- A C compiler on the Atari 512. It can't have been expensive, as after buying the hardware, I couldn't have afforded it!
- Small C. Completely free, as I remember it.
- Borland Pascal, also cheap.
Of course, I think things are much better today with the likes of GCC.
I don't remember the price but it was probably something like $50 in the early 80s. Certainly far cheaper than the Microsoft C compiler. As I recall it had quite a few quirks though.
Turbo Pascal was quite the innovation when it came out. I had a copy but never really got into it though. I don't remember the sequence but I was probably was into assembly by then and likely got Turbo C when it came out a few years later.
I was in grad school for a couple years in there and wasn't doing much programming at the time.
Still, none of this was especially cheap compared to free as in beer/speech today.
> none of this was especially cheap compared to free as in beer/speech today
Of course, but I was really pleased to get my boss to shell out for quite a good (at the time) C compiler!
A couple (or something like that, maybe three) of years later, when I was working at the BBC, I got another boss to buy the Zortech C++ compiler, which really launched my career as a C++ programmer, although I had tried to use the E edition of C++ earlier, but found the installation on our Unix box too difficult.
- I got C for free on the first Unix systems the polytechnic I was working for bought - a desktop, but still a multi-user system. We had it connected to VT100 compatible terminals via the poly's WAN that anyone could connect to.
- Desmet C on the IBM PC. I can't remember the exact price, but much less than 100 GBP, otherwise I couldn't have wangled the expense.
- A C compiler on the Atari 512. It can't have been expensive, as after buying the hardware, I couldn't have afforded it!
- Small C. Completely free, as I remember it.
- Borland Pascal, also cheap.
Of course, I think things are much better today with the likes of GCC.