Don't you think Basic was the most popular language at the time because it came for free with many home computers? C and other compilers were hideously expensi

Don't you think Basic was the most popular language at the time because it came for free with many home computers? C and other compilers were hideously expensive at the time, no wonder these languages weren't particularly popular. And have you considered that one reason for OS X development tools being available free of charge these days might be because Free software changed the development tools landscape dramatically in the last two decades?