I learned to program in C in the late 80s, before the web, and then went on to do a CS degree at university.

Learning to code was very difficult in those days.

1. There were no free compilers outside of academia.

2. Compilers cost hundreds of dollars

3. Programming books cost $50 each

I used to buy $5 shareware disks that claimed to have compilers and tutorials on them and they never had exactly what was advertised.

In the end I managed to buy a second-hand slightly out-of-date compiler (Turbo-C?). I still seemed to spend any spare cash I had on books.