Turbo Pascal

Turbo Pascal is a cheap and powerful IDE for the Pascal programming language. The compiler was based on the Blue Label Pascal compiler originally produced for the NasSys cassette-based operating system of the Nascom microcomputer in 1981 by Anders Hejlsberg. This was first rewritten as the Compass Pascal compiler for the CP/M operating system and then as the Turbo Pascal compiler for the DOS operating system and CP/M.

When the first version of Turbo Pascal appeared in 1983, the concept of IDEs was relatively uncommon. The integrated Pascal compiler also was of very good quality compared to other Pascal products and was affordable above all. It is likely that Microsoft Pascal was dropped because of the competition provided by Turbo Pascal's good quality and cheap price.

Over the years Borland enhanced not only the IDE but also the programming language, since version 5 it contained object oriented programming features. The latest version of the Turbo Pascal was called Borland Pascal[?] 7 and contained an IDE and compilers for creating DOS, extended DOS and Windows 3.x programs.

In the early 1990s, Borland dropped Turbo Pascal and replaced it with the RAD[?] environment Delphi, which included the language Object Pascal. The current version of Delphi still supports all the Pascal enhancements of the earlier products including the "old" object model.