[adrianoconnor]

I remember following those same tutorials and not really learning much (but I was probably 11 at the time). I also remember that the OS includes were around £300 and there was no way I could ever afford that. I convinced my parents to buy me Blitz Basic 2 after following another Amiga Format tutorial later on, and that is what finally set me on my path. Programming in the 90's was generally a really expensive thing to get in to... And it was even worse on PC.

[Beldin]

On the PC, you got QBasic out of the box. That actually lets you push things already a bit. The main things really missing were soundcard sound and mouse input.

But if you got to that stage, you had enough of a clue to go shopping about for other compilers / assemblers.