I remember sometime back in the 90's buying a used copy of Visual C++ 5.0 from
some dude at the mall. It felt kinda shady, like a drug deal was going down,
but I turned out well and I scored a legit(?) copy for much cheaper than market
value. I was very excited when I got it home, and it kept me busy for a long
while. There's a lot of good documentation (and source code) on those CD's and
it taught me a lot, (pretty much) coming from Quake C.
I think at some point I also started using DJGPP, which pushed me toward GCC (and Linux).
I think at some point I also started using DJGPP, which pushed me toward GCC (and Linux).