News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991). Parent comment

Re:The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991) by bsder on Friday March 30, 2018 @08:19PM (#16720889)
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?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991) by pjmlp on Saturday March 31, 2018 @01:11AM (#16721852)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
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...

[ Parent | on HN ]