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Not everyone had finances for magazines, not everyone lives in a densely populated area where you can get access to information, including libraries.

Many HN readers frequently forget they lived in the perfect storm to allow their skills to grow.

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Indeed, as a kid of 10, I remember learning C/C++ thanks to DJGPP, a DOS port of GCC, being free software. I didn't have any money to buy a commercial compiler, though I never asked my parents. I wasn't sure how to frame the question, I guess. Well, regardless, getting your hands on a commercial compiler wasn't that difficult in the late 90s/early 00s. Soon after though small non-commercial indie games kinda died out and everyone was using DirectX using MSVC on Windows, until SDL came out.

SDL appeared in late 90s / early 00s, that's pretty much when it became popular (e.g. most early Loki Linux game ports from used SDL).

As far as compilers, Borland shipped a free version of their C++ Builder 5.5 compiler right around that time, too, so on Windows we had that in addition to MinGW.

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