I remember it the same as a kid. I read an interview with Peter Molyneux in Amiga Format or Amiga User where he talked about using C to code populous and I figured - ‘I need to learn C!. So I managed to save up 15 pounds or so, which was a fair bit of money then, to order a shareware C compiler from the magazine classifieds. I remember it came on several floppy disks. Then I found out I stll needed the commodore standard libraries (which cost hundreds) if I wanted to actual make anything and I was stumped! Ah the joys.