We have more options for languages and editors than ever before that directly compete against commercial options. And a decent amount of the time, they're funda

We have more options for languages and editors than ever before that directly compete against commercial options. And a decent amount of the time, they're fundamentally better and widely used commercially. I certainly do remember the main options being: buy commercial software, download an inferior freeware, or go through a huge effort setting up emacs to be a low quality version of one of the first 2. Oh, and now it's ok/expected you don't have to use windows for everything, because that was the case for a while. IMO, it's never been easier to use excellent software while avoiding corporate bullshit, so I'm glad we're not back then anymore. Edit: FWIW I'm early 30's programming for about 15-20 years of those (arguably!)