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Thinking Back on ‘Turbo Pascal’ as It Turns 40
Several sites are reporting on the 40th anniversary of Turbo Pascal [turbopascal.org], which was last month already.
At the vintage computing web blog, Byte Cellar:
November marked the 40th anniversary of Turbo Pascal, the first Integrated Development Environment (or IDE), which allowed a user to quickly and easily write a program in the Pascal programming language [wikipedia.org] and see it compiled and linked — all in one go — with an executable dropped to disk at the end. Much simpler a process than the traditional model of programming in a text editor, using a compiler to convert the source into object code (often over several passes), and running a linker to integrate any required libraries, Turbo Pascal was friendly, fast, and cheap. Created by Anders Hejlsberg, the development package was released by Borland in November 1983 at a price of $49.99 for both CP/M and DOS-based systems.
Created by Niklaus Wirth in 1970, Pascal is a small and efficient procedural programming language that is easy to use and, thanks to its structured programming nature, was often employed as a language for learning programming concepts at a level higher than traditional, early BASIC. It is in this capacity that I had my first hands-on experiences with the language in an A.P. Computer Science class I took in high school during the late ’80s. Here, at its 40th anniversary, I thought I would share some memories I have with Turbo Pascal.
- — Thinking Back on ‘Turbo Pascal’ as It Turns 40 [bytecellar.com]
And over at The Register:
The language might have offended Pascal purists and the IDE seems a little clunky nowadays when compared to modern tools. However, 40 years ago it prompted a new era of development, one whose influence can still be felt today.
- — 40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs [theregister.com]
Borland was the maker of Turbo Pascal, and ended up getting eviscerated by M$ which hired away too many key developers for Borland to survive [cnet.com]. The developers were mainly hired to keep them off the market. Eventually Borland sued Microsoft for unfair competition but by then the damage was done [eetimes.com] and it was game over.
Pascal [lysator.liu.se] is a compiled language and there were several varieties. Those who might have missed Turbo Pascal the first time around can try it out with DOSBox though finding it might be a challenge. Turbo Pascal's successor is Delphi.
