Back in the late 80s, the first "real" compiler I had was Logitech Modula-2 (yes, they used to sell stuff other than mice). Even then, Turbo Pascal 3 felt like

Back in the late 80s, the first "real" compiler I had was Logitech Modula-2 (yes, they used to sell stuff other than mice). Even then, Turbo Pascal 3 felt like a toy. Modula-2 was the real thing. And it was slow! Granted that was on an 80286, but the compiler was slow. (The generated code was fine.) I had used a different flavour of Pascal previously, but Modula-2 felt right. I liked the case sensitivity compared to Pascal's ambivalence. I liked the strong typing with clear differences between signed and unsigned integers. I liked the better block structures that omitted Pascal's "begin" keyword. I liked the way modules were organised. What happened to Modula-2, in my case, was Turbo Pascal again. I got a job, where we used Turbo Pascal 4. Then 5, and then 5.5 which introduced single inheritance OOP. Then we needed to migrate to this new fangled "Windows 3.1" thing, which at the time we chose C++ and MFC. I stuck with C++ for many years and never went back to Pascal (which evolved into Delphi, successful in its own right). I think in the broader sense, C++ happened to Modula-2. In the early 90s, C++ was the hot new thing and people were using either that or C. The next shakeup had to wait until Java in the mid 90s.