Maybe not. In my case, I was just out of school in the 80's and would never be able to have afforded a $1000+ compiler. When Turbo Pascal came out at that price point, I jumped on it. It was my chance to do some 'real' programming at a budget friendly price. Even IBM's Macro Assembler at that time was several hundred dollars.
I would credit Borland and providing the launchpad for thousands and thousands of students, hobbyists and amateur enthusiasts to start their programming careers, who never would have otherwise. My first program I sold for $$$ was written in Turbo Pascal.
