2026-09-28 17:19 UTC
RE: https://scalie.club/@kyle_pegasus/117349793569394948
as a kid with a PC, my family couldn't afford to buy commercial compilers, and i didn't have the connections to pirate them, so i would check out books about pascal and c at the library and then write code on pen and paper and mentally execute it in my head, or translate it into BASIC to run. "learn X by rejecting technology" worked pretty well for me
Replies (1)
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@LilFluff@mastodon.art 2026-09-28 22:38
@joe@f.duriansoftware.com I cringed at the C Compiler prices but eventually got a C interpreter that came with a Microsoft Press book on C in the early 90s. Not sure whether it was actually an interpreter or if it compiled but only wrote to ram and not disk (iirc the back cover flap included a coupon for a discount on Quick C that took it from too expensive for teenage me to slightly less too expensive for teenage me). No real advice on debugging so I crashed and burned on my first attempt to go beyond the lessons.