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Turbo Pascal was beautiful. Never quite understood why the industry chose C++.

WalterBright 8y ago
Because TP only ran on DOS. C++ ran on diverse machines. C++ was also an open standard that anyone could (and did) implement. I remember phoning up AT&T's lawyer to ask him if I could get permission to implement a C++ compiler, and call it C++. He laughed, and thanked me for asking, saying nobody else had bothered :-) I've always had warm feelings towards AT&T based on that experience.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  Turbo Pascal 5.5 (the first version implementing Object Pascal and thus could be compared to C++ as opposed to C) was only on DOS indeed, but practically everyone was there and Turbo Pascal for Windows was released in 1991 just when Windows was taking off. But ignoring Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal was already implemented in Macintosh by both Apple (who got Niklaus Wirth to assist in designing the object oriented extensions) and others (most notably Think Pascal). Of course these weren't standardized and had slight differences in their syntax, but at the time C++ wasn't standardized either and - again - not all compilers were compatible. I think the main reason that C++ got its hold was that it was compatible with C which itself got its hold over other similar languages because the popular OSes of the time used it and provided headers in C, all documentation was about the C interface and most third party stuff hooked up with C. Borland initially tried to Pascal-ize the C bits of Windows (f.e. they converted the function declarations from C to Pascal in the Windows SDK docs they distributed up until and including Delphi 1) but eventually gave up (Delphi 2's Windows API docs use C syntax). Of course that was up to early-90s. After that it was mainly Borland who used Pascal and they succumbed to Enterprise Envy, constantly and it wouldn't be until Free Pascal released version 1.0 years later (in 2000) that a competent 3rd party implementation would exist - and even that was mostly ignored until people started noticing Lazarus in very recent years. Of course now is too late to change the tide as no matter what a Pascal compiler may provide, most people have a ton of preconceived notions about the language.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    If I may brag a bit, Zortech C++ was the tipping point for C++ adoption. Before ZTC++, C++ and Objective-C were neck and neck. But OC required a license from Stepstone to implement it, and C++ did not. ZTC++ was the first native, cheap, fast and effective compiler for DOS. I agree with you that DOS was where the action was in 1987. ZTC++'s debut was immediately followed by a veritable explosion of C++ articles in magazines, followed of course by its use. Since ZTC++ was not a proprietary language, people felt confident to use it on DOS and use cfront elsewhere (and the nascent g++). The success of ZTC++ directly caused Borland to do Turbo C++, followed by Microsoft C++, and other languages were simply left in the dust.

Because TP only ran on DOS. C++ ran on diverse machines. C++ was also an open standard that anyone could (and did) implement. I remember phoning up AT&T's lawyer to ask him if I could get permission to implement a C++ compiler, and call it C++. He laughed, and thanked me for asking, saying nobody else had bothered :-) I've always had warm feelings towards AT&T based on that experience.

badsectoracula 8y ago
Turbo Pascal 5.5 (the first version implementing Object Pascal and thus could be compared to C++ as opposed to C) was only on DOS indeed, but practically everyone was there and Turbo Pascal for Windows was released in 1991 just when Windows was taking off. But ignoring Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal was already implemented in Macintosh by both Apple (who got Niklaus Wirth to assist in designing the object oriented extensions) and others (most notably Think Pascal). Of course these weren't standardized and had slight differences in their syntax, but at the time C++ wasn't standardized either and - again - not all compilers were compatible. I think the main reason that C++ got its hold was that it was compatible with C which itself got its hold over other similar languages because the popular OSes of the time used it and provided headers in C, all documentation was about the C interface and most third party stuff hooked up with C. Borland initially tried to Pascal-ize the C bits of Windows (f.e. they converted the function declarations from C to Pascal in the Windows SDK docs they distributed up until and including Delphi 1) but eventually gave up (Delphi 2's Windows API docs use C syntax). Of course that was up to early-90s. After that it was mainly Borland who used Pascal and they succumbed to Enterprise Envy, constantly and it wouldn't be until Free Pascal released version 1.0 years later (in 2000) that a competent 3rd party implementation would exist - and even that was mostly ignored until people started noticing Lazarus in very recent years. Of course now is too late to change the tide as no matter what a Pascal compiler may provide, most people have a ton of preconceived notions about the language.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  If I may brag a bit, Zortech C++ was the tipping point for C++ adoption. Before ZTC++, C++ and Objective-C were neck and neck. But OC required a license from Stepstone to implement it, and C++ did not. ZTC++ was the first native, cheap, fast and effective compiler for DOS. I agree with you that DOS was where the action was in 1987. ZTC++'s debut was immediately followed by a veritable explosion of C++ articles in magazines, followed of course by its use. Since ZTC++ was not a proprietary language, people felt confident to use it on DOS and use cfront elsewhere (and the nascent g++). The success of ZTC++ directly caused Borland to do Turbo C++, followed by Microsoft C++, and other languages were simply left in the dust.