We live in a golden age of art programs (and tablet hardware!).
I remember in 2005, where every art program was either a pirated copy of Photoshop 7 (even though CS2 was out at this point) or Open Canvas 1.1. If you were a cool kid, you used Oekaki boards or Art Rage.
Nowadays, we have inexpensive art programs like Clip Studio Paint and Paint Tool SAI. We have free programs like Krita and Medibang Paint Pro which are also really high quality. Then as far as cheap Photoshop and Illustrator alternatives go, there’s Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, respectively. I know there’s many more programs, but it’s just so exciting how many options there are for digital artists these days!