Personally I started out with C in the late 90's early 2000's when C++ under windows was either using a really basic (albeit cool) gcc (which was fine for c but

Personally I started out with C in the late 90's early 2000's when C++ under windows was either using a really basic (albeit cool) gcc (which was fine for c but the c++ part wasn't really there for what I wanted it; There were other free compiler but same story kinda) or shelling out serious money to get Visual Studio or something else. After Visual Studio (first with their Visual Studio Express Editions) became "free" (yeah yeah, not really there are some strings attached tho), I never looked back and used C++ exclusively (more or less; I dabbled in some other "cool" languages here and there, tho).