It would’ve been nice to have a system that I could just ask questions to teach me how it works instead of having to pour through the few books that existed on C that was actually accessible to a teenager learning on their own

Going to arcane websites, forum full of neckbeards to expect you to already understand everything isn’t exactly a great way to learn

The early Internet was unbelievably hostile to people trying to learn genuinely

*pore through

(not a judgment, just mentioning in case the distinction is interesting to anyone)

I had the books (from the library) but never managed to get a compiler for many years! Was quite confusing trying to understand all the unix references when my only experience with a computer was the Atari ST.