C did compile to more efficient code than Pascal, but The Delphi compiler processed code 10x faster than the C compiler, and hit an amazing sweet spot for the 3

C did compile to more efficient code than Pascal, but The Delphi compiler processed code 10x faster than the C compiler, and hit an amazing sweet spot for the 300Mhz workstations of the day, where you could iterate through edit/compile/run in Delphi just as fast as Visual Basic, and when you were done the program ran an order of magnitude faster than VB (and maybe 90% as fast as C). Also, because the language was easier to parse, the tooling was able to interact with your code way better than Borland's same product for C++ or any of Microsoft's products, so you were getting more accurate code completion and context-sensitive help and all that. I believe that Delphi was a vastly superior product to any of its contemporaries, and was killed purely by corporate forces.