Turbo Pascal, one of the earliest IDE programming tools, celebrates its 40th anniversary this month (first released in December 1983).
The inception of Turbo Pascal can be attributed to Philippe Kahn, the founder of Borland, in 1982. He recognized the opportunity in the previously fragmented software development tools market and envisioned a package that would combine all the necessary tools, including an editor, compiler, and more. Kahn acquired the Blue Label Pascal compiler, developed by Danish programmer Anders Hejlsberg, and added an editor and a user interface. The result was Turbo Pascal, priced at a mere $49.99, a significantly lower cost compared to its competitors at that time, which priced in the hundreds of dollars.
Anders Hejlsberg later joined Borland and became the key developer of Turbo Pascal in all subsequent versions. Borland eventually divided this software into two versions: Turbo Pascal, the affordable version, and Borland Pascal, which had a higher price tag due to its advanced capabilities. Borland Pascal eventually evolved into Borland Delphi in 1995.
The popularity of Turbo Pascal propelled Borland to become a leading company in the IDE industry, with the release of other tools like Turbo C following suit. The company went public with an IPO in 1989.
However, Borland’s fate took a downturn in the next decade. It sold all its IDE businesses under the CodeGear brand to Embarcadero Technologies, the creators of Rapid SQL database tools, in 2008. (Embarcadero currently sells Delphi under the RAD Studio brand.) Borland itself sold its remaining business to Micro Focus in 2009.
Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Turbo Pascal and Delphi, continued his illustrious career beyond that. He moved to Microsoft in 1996 and played a pivotal role in creating the C# language in 2000 and TypeScript in 2012. He is uniquely responsible for creating four significant programming languages that have had a profound impact on the world.
Today, Turbo Pascal software is available as open source and can be downloaded from Sourceforge, but it requires the use of DOSBox to run.
TLDR: Turbo Pascal, developed by Philippe Kahn and bolstered by Anders Hejlsberg, revolutionized the IDE industry with its affordable price and bundled tools. Borland, the company behind Turbo Pascal, faced challenges in later years, selling its IDE business to Embarcadero Technologies. Anders Hejlsberg continued his successful career at Microsoft, creating the C# and TypeScript languages. Turbo Pascal remains accessible as open-source software, downloadable from Sourceforge with the aid of DOSBox.
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