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The editor did nothing more than notepad does today and the IDE at least back when I was using it was basically just a compiler, debugger with basic inspection
by sanswork 3y ago
The editor did nothing more than notepad does today and the IDE at least back when I was using it was basically just a compiler, debugger with basic inspection window and stepping and a make system. It wasn't doing realtime formatting of your code, inspection for errors, referencing to other parts of code, autocompletion, syntax highlighting, etc.
- pjmlp 3y agoStuck in MS-DOS? As someone that used all their products from MS-DOS, through Windows 3.x days up to switching to Visual C++ 6.0, I clearly remeber code completion, syntax highlighting and macros, three features that Notepad isn't capable of. As easily proven, by reading the manuals available in Bitsavers.
- sanswork 3y agoYeah looks like you're right about at least the syntax highlighting and macros, I can't find any reference to Borland doing code completion back then and what I did find was people from much later complaining that it'd take up to 5 seconds to return suggestions, I used it around 4.5 and really don't remember any of those features though. I guess it was almost 30 years ago now though and I was mostly just interested in making the asteroids do weird things. So replace Notepad with Notepad++ in my previous comments. There are definitely fast editors that do the same thing as Borland editors did back then the ones like VSC do a whole lot more and support a whole lot more.
- pjmlp 3y agoBesides moving goalposts, Notepad++ still isn't on the same league as Borland's IDEs.
- vetinari 3y agoTurbo Pascal 7 did syntax highlighting, as well as source-level debugging. That was on top of nice-to-have features like auto-indenting. It was a DOS, Turbo Vision application.