alt Hacker NewsYeah, it's worth remembering that at the time a compiler cost $10k+, an OS $1000s/year - you couldn't work on OS or compiler work unless you worked for a big hardware company - a whole lot of interesting work was locked away from most programmers
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sethev • yesterday at 10:41 PM
Yes, that is the context in which I first read it (likely around 1999 when it appeared on slashdot), as a senior in high school with no access to the tools used by most professional programmers at the time.
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Wasn’t Cathedral and the Bazaar originally published in 1999? Who was paying thousands of dollars a year for an OS in 199? And I think GCC was already widespread by then, no?
I didn’t start programming until a few years later, but for sure by 2002, it seemed to me a given that compilers were free. It was my impression that stuff like Borland was niche and that serious stuff like Java and C were free.
Not saying you are wrong, just your comment surprised me. Maybe I have a revisionist memory or maybe those intervening 3 years were quite transformational in the industry.