I went to college in 1995... $99 would have likely been out of reach.
I had access to C/C++ in high school on a PC only because my father ran an engineering group and brought home a VC++ license for us. I didn't get to use it that much before heading off to college.
I mostly used BASIC early on cause we had it free with the first 2-3 PCs we had. By High School I had gotten my hands on Turbo Pascal for free, maybe again through my father. High School classes were in Pascal. Turbo Pascal blazed and worked even on our 286 IIRC, which had minimal graphics capabilities. Even once we got a 486 TP was so lightweight compared to booting up windows that probably helped it's popularity for people who were stuck on PCs at home.
As soon as I went to college I always had access to C/C++ and that's what classes were taught in, and by Winter 95/96 we were all getting linux up and running and started having access to all the GNU stuff for doing our work.
I had access to C/C++ in high school on a PC only because my father ran an engineering group and brought home a VC++ license for us. I didn't get to use it that much before heading off to college.
I mostly used BASIC early on cause we had it free with the first 2-3 PCs we had. By High School I had gotten my hands on Turbo Pascal for free, maybe again through my father. High School classes were in Pascal. Turbo Pascal blazed and worked even on our 286 IIRC, which had minimal graphics capabilities. Even once we got a 486 TP was so lightweight compared to booting up windows that probably helped it's popularity for people who were stuck on PCs at home.
As soon as I went to college I always had access to C/C++ and that's what classes were taught in, and by Winter 95/96 we were all getting linux up and running and started having access to all the GNU stuff for doing our work.