[Narishma]

> It's intriguing to think how different my experience could have been if educational material at the time had focused as much on full explanations of the compiler+linker process, including example error conditions, as it did on teaching the language.

Did you not read the manuals that came with Turbo C or Pascal? They explain all those things. They taught both the language and the tools. For example: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandturVersion5.0Us...

Microsoft tools back then also came with extensive high quality manuals.