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There were hardly any free compiler toolchains outside the UNIX world in the 80's. But it's not the 80's anymore, time has moved on.
by flohofwoe 4y ago
There were hardly any free compiler toolchains outside the UNIX world in the 80's. But it's not the 80's anymore, time has moved on.
- PaulHoule 4y agoEvery micro in the early 1980s came with BASIC except for a few very early ones that only had a front panel machine language monitor.
- flohofwoe 4y agoTrue, but BASIC on home computers wasted so much potential that it was more or less just a gateway drug (about 100x slower than hand-written assembly code - and even assemblers cost money - so for free options you only had the choice between a very slow BASIC program, or typing hex opcodes into the machine ;) PS: ok, except Acorn/BBC BASIC which had a frigging inline assembler :)
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoI remember C compilers costing $1000 in the 90's, before GNU software compiled with GCC came along to disrupt that nonsense.
- flohofwoe 4y agoOn the Amiga it was a bit better, I bought my first C compiler (DICE-C by Matt Dillon of DragonFly-BSD fame) for something like $99 in the early 90's.
- actionfromafar 4y agoMatt Dillon has done a lot of great stuff, but to me he is somehow still Matt Dillon of DICE-C fame. :-)