The legacy can still be felt today
It is 40 years since Turbo Pascal revolutionized the coding marketplace with a slick (for the time) Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and performance to spare. So why aren’t we all using it today?
Turbo Pascal was released in 1983 and represented a shift from the traditional way programming tools worked in the early days of IBM PC compatibles. Rather than multiple compiler and linking passes that required time-consuming floppy disk access, Turbo Pascal did everything in RAM, making it considerably faster – hence the name “Turbo.”
Anders Hejlsberg, who would later go on to join Microsoft as part of the C# project, is widely credited as creator of the language, with Borland boss Philippe Kahn identifying the need for the all-in-one tool.
It was also cheap – where the competition could cost hundreds of dollars, Turbo Pascal retailed for $49.99. However, its maker, Borland, wanted a little extra if a customer planned to distribute the binaries.
