I almost forgot how bad the dev-tools ecosystem was back in the day. I remember back in 1998, when I was 15, I took on a vacation job in a car shop (wet sanding car parts) just to afford Visual C++ 6.0.
I also had to order the compiler through a local dealer and delivery took 6 weeks. But I still have the box and CD-ROM :)
The Linux world was good. We didn't had a RAD, but we had good compilers, debuggers, source navigation tools and very good programming text editors.
It was around that time that I knew Linux and started migrating.