Turbo Pascal

Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Pascal programming language, developed by Borland and led by Philippe Kahn.

Released in 1983 for MS-DOS, CP/M, CP/M-86, and later for Microsoft Windows, it was for a long time the most widespread version of the Pascal language. There was also a short-lived version for the Apple Macintosh.

Borland Pascal

The name Borland Pascal was generally reserved for high-end packages for Microsoft Windows (with more libraries and the standard library of source code), while the original, cheaper and widely known version was sold as Turbo Pascal.

Versions

Borland released seven versions of Turbo Pascal: 1.0 to 5.5 (Object Oriented), 6 and 7 for MS-DOS. He was replaced by Borland Delphi.

Turbo Pascal 1.0, 1983. Compiles directly to machine code. It requires 32 kilobytes of RAM. It has an integrated compiler/editor, for high compilation speed.

Turbo Pascal 2.0, 1984. Increased the size of the generated program – allows up to 64 kilobytes of code, stack and data. DOS version supports coprocessor math and decimal binary arithmetic (with binary decimal code.

Turbo Pascal 3.0, 1985. Support for the shell structure. Support for graphics modes. Special sub-image for PC compatible IBM computers, including the "turtle shell" schedule. Tools kit.

Turbo Pascal 4.0, 1987. Separates the compilation from the modules. The size is limited only by RAM. Menu driven integrated development environment, smart design modules. Stand-alone command line compiler. Help sensitive to the context of the system.

Turbo Pascal 5.0, 1988. Restores support to overlay structures. Built the debugger. Separate debugger (Turbo Debugger). Math coprocessor emulation. Support for BGI (Borland Graphic Interface) graphics drivers.

Turbo Pascal 5.5, 1989. Object-oriented programming. Ability to copy program examples from the help system. It has the Turbo Profiler that allows you to optimize the code.

Turbo Pascal 6.0, 1990. Includes the Turbo Vision Library. The new IDE, rewrite using Turbo Vision, mouse usage and supports multiple file editing at the same time in different windows. The ability to specify the built-in debugger and conditionals on the number of breakpoints. It incorporates assembler, allows MLTB in the Turbo Pascal for Windows. Creating 16-bit programs in Windows. Windows Object Library (OWL) Services, Similar in ideology to Turbo Vision. graphical IDE.

Borland Pascal 7.0, 1992. Release date of Borland Pascal 7.0, includes a cheaper and less powerful Turbo Pascal 7.0 which is also supplied separately. BP 7.0, allows you to create programs in real mode.

Background

The Pascal programming language is a high-level, general-purpose language (applicable to a large number of diverse applications) developed by Swiss professor Niklaus Wirth (Zurich Institute of Technology, Switzerland). Wirth's purpose was to create a language for teaching programming techniques to university students. But as the years passed, Pascal became a standard in the world of programming.

A preliminary version of the language appeared in 1968, and the first fully complete compiler appeared in the late 1970s. Since then, many compilers have been built and are available for different machines. For many years, the book Pascal User Manual and Report, published by Wirth and Kathleen Jensen in 1974, has served as the de facto standard for all versions.

Different versions offered slightly different interpretations that prevented compatibility between them. For these reasons, different projects were initiated to produce a standard definition of the language and culminated in two standards: one by the International Standard Organization (ISO) in 1982 and another by a joint committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

These two versions or definitions are known as ISO Pascal and ANSI/IEEE Pascal, and they differ in some not particularly significant ways. However, a non-standard version has become quite popular: Turbo Pascal (registered trademark of Borland International, Inc.). This version has greatly contributed to the popularization of the Pascal language.

The Borland Pascal name was generally reserved for high-end packages for Microsoft Windows (with more libraries and the standard source code library), while the original, cheaper and widely known version was sold as Turbo Pascal.

Turbo Pascal is a development environment for the Pascal programming language. It is used in Turbo Pascal based on the earlier UCSD Pascal, it gained acceptance, especially on the Apple II series computers. The Turbo Pascal compiler was based on Blue Label Pascal, originally created in 1981 by Anders Hejlsberg for the NasSys operating system, Nascom microcomputer. later rewritten as Pascal for the CP/M operating system, and then as a Turbo Pascal for DOS and CP/M. One version of Turbo Pascal was available for the Apple Macintosh around 1986, but development stopped around 1992.

History

The Pascal programming language first appeared in 1971 by Niklaus Wirth.

Wirh invented the language as a way to improve on the then archaic Algol. It is not the first language that Wirth designs, he later invented Modula-2 and Oberon. However, paradoxically, those two languages have been largely superseded by Extended Pascal and Object Pascal. Of all those languages, Pascal is the most successful.

Although born in the early 1970s, Pascal came to life in the early/mid 1980s, popularized by the fabulous Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS for the PC, and especially Apple Pascal. Pascal has been so popular until the mid 90's, that a large part (most) of the applications developed for the Mac were made in Pascal, as well as a huge part of the MS-DOS programs as well.

Even today, Pascal is taught in universities as a first language, as it is a very readable language.

It was Borland who, until Turbo Pascal 7, was in charge of most of the evolution of this language. In the mid-1990s, with the Windows boom and the renaissance of Unix systems (including Linux) as server computers first and then as workstations, Pascal was pushed into the background in favor of C.

At the time, pretty much only Delphi (Object Pascal for Windows) managed to stay in the gap, but settling for only a small part of the market.

Almost everyone tried to switch to C++. Notice that we say tried. C++ failed to fully catch on due to its extreme complexity. Its object system, macros, cryptic function names, unwieldy namespaces, templates, STL and a host of other things, quickly made many people go from wanting to use that tool that everyone claimed to be so powerful, to look for alternatives that were simpler and more practical. Sun, the Java company, spent a million dollars promoting their language, and it was very successful, no doubt due not only to advertising money, but to people escaping the scalding of C++. Actually, Java is not an easy language to learn (it forces you to think in objects from the beginning, something that newbies don't do well with), but compared to C++, it could be considered as something simple.

Borland, a company with not as much money as Sun, couldn't compete with Pascal, and had to make do by releasing its own Java virtual machine. But Delphi has never ceased to exist. Even today it continues to release Delphi versions, with great success, although it does not manage to significantly increase its percentage of market share.

The move from Turbo Pascal to Delphi also brought about the appearance of Kylix, which is nothing more than a multiplatform Delphi. It didn't catch on enough, due to the closed license, and because it required the compiled program to be GPL.

Microsoft later bought most of Borland. With this, Kylix and Linux were abandoned and Borland was made 100% Windows. This strategy has practically ruined Pascal's advance against other languages, in the corporate environment.

At the time Borland moved from Turbo Pascal to Delphi, Free Pascal appeared. Free Pascal is an attempt by the open source community to make a Turbo Pascal compatible compiler for all popular platforms (including Linux, OS X and Windows). Since version 2.0, Free Pascal is also compatible with Delphi.

Free Pascal is today the preferred system for cross-platform Pascal programming. Its main IDE, Lazarus, a Delphi clone, runs on both Windows and OS X as well as Linux.

Lazarus and Free Pascal are the great hope of the Pascal programming language, and of cross-platform development environments in general. Its development is very active, and it certainly has a promising future.

Evolution

It was Borland who, until Turbo Pascal 7, was in charge of most of the evolution of this language. In the mid-1990s, with the Windows boom and the renaissance of Unix systems (including Linux) as server computers first and then as workstations, Pascal took a back seat to C.

At the time, pretty much only Delphi (Object Pascal for Windows) managed to stay in the gap, but settling for only a small part of the market.

Almost everyone tried to switch to C++ but it didn't quite catch on because of its extreme complexity. Its object system, macros, cryptic function names, unwieldy namespaces, templates, STL and a host of other things, quickly made many people go from wanting to use that tool that everyone claimed to be so powerful, to look for alternatives that were simpler and more practical. Sun, the Java company, spent a million dollars promoting their language, and it was very successful, no doubt due not only to advertising money, but to people escaping the scalding of C++. Actually, Java is not an easy language to learn (it forces you to think in objects from the beginning, something that newbies don't do well with), but compared to C++, it could be considered as something simple.

Borland, a company with not as much money as Sun, couldn't compete with Pascal, and had to make do by releasing its own Java virtual machine. But Delphi has never ceased to exist. Even today it continues to release Delphi versions, with great success, although it does not manage to significantly increase its percentage of market share.

The move from Turbo Pascal to Delphi also brought about the appearance of Kylix, which is nothing more than a multiplatform Delphi. It didn't catch on enough, due to the closed license, and because it required the compiled program to be GPL.

Microsoft later bought most of Borland. With this, Kylix and Linux were abandoned and Borland was made 100% Windows. This strategy has practically ruined Pascal's advance against other languages, in the corporate environment.

At the time Borland moved from Turbo Pascal to Delphi, Free Pascal appeared. Free Pascal is an attempt by the open source community to make a Turbo Pascal compatible compiler for all popular platforms (including Linux, OS X and Windows). Since version 2.0, Free Pascal is also compatible with Delphi.

Free Pascal is today the preferred system for cross-platform Pascal programming. Its main IDE, Lazarus, a Delphi clone, runs on both Windows and OS X as well as Linux.

Lazarus and Free Pascal are the great hope of the Pascal programming language, and of cross-platform development environments in general. Its development is very active, and it certainly has a promising future.

Features

Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Pascal programming language, developed by Borland and led by Philippe Kahn. It was released in 1983 for MS-DOS, CP/M, CP/M-86, and later for Microsoft Windows. There was also a short-lived version for the Apple Macintosh.

Borland's world-famous Pascal compiler was introduced in 1985. The Turbo Pascal compiler has been one of the best-selling compiler series of all time, and made Pascal a language especially important on the PC platform, thanks to its balance between simplicity and power. Turbo Pascal introduced an integrated programming environment (IDE) in which you could edit your code (in a WordStar-compatible editor), run the compiler, view errors, and return directly to the lines containing the errors. Now it sounds trivial, but before that you had to exit the editor, go back to MS-DOS, run the command line compiler, note the erroneous lines, open the editor again, and search for them.

In addition, Borland listed Turbo Pascal for $49 (US), while Microsoft's Pascal compiler was a few hundred dollars. Turbo Pascal's many years of success contributed to Microsoft eventually pulling its compiler off the market.