Okay, maybe C isn't free at the time, but you can get it for anywhere between $50-100 1985 dollars--that qualifies as fairly cheap--especially for the kinds of technically competent individuals who would buy such a thing.
So, what "better" language could you get for that price at that time?
Actually without bothering to go again diving into old magazines, it was more like $150 or more, with student discount.
Pascal compilers like Turbo Pascal, for example.
Re:The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)
by AdieuToLogic on Saturday March 31, 2018 @11:21AM
(#16723648)
Aztec C[0], by Manx, cost about $200 USD in 1988. It came with a "complete" dev environment for PC-DOS (the version I have) which included:
- C compiler
- Assembler
- Linker
- Make
- Grep
- Z (an editor kinda like vi IIRC)
I remember it being able to make very small executables, which meant a lot at that time.
0 - https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_manxAztecClApr88_25693...
Small-C was probably the only dialect freely available, everything else was either commercial, or came for "free" with an UNIX workstation price tag.
In fact, it was due to Solaris change of heart regarding developers, that some devs started to contribute to GCC.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988021
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8984454
I have a few editions of Dr Dobbs Journal comparing C compilers, all commercial, GCC was yet to be relevant.