5 ms·

Rediscovering Turbo Pascal

68 points by AlexeyBrin 2y ago

jim_lawless 2y ago
At the time of the release of Turbo Pascal 3.x, the IDE's on the CP/M version and MS-DOS version were almost identical. I suspect that the author was using TP 4.x or later on MS-DOS. Turbo Pascal on CP/M was a sweet spot among the development tools of the day. As the author describes, the IDE was very pleasant to use, compile-times were speedy, the generated code was compact, and the language implementation permitted a nice mix of high-level constructs with low-level access.
- pamoroso 2y ago
  Author here. Yes, on MS-DOS I used Turbo Pascal versions later than 4.
- kjs3 2y ago
  I think there's a lot of us that got spoiled by the TP IDE. It was night and day more productive than the contemporary environments (particularly on CP/M). Other Pascal (and other) compilers might have been 'better' in some ways, but noone really had the edit->compile->fix workflow in one mostly seemless, easy to use package.
kvakkefly 2y ago
You might enjoy the rabbit hole my friend dug into when he created TRSE: https://lemonspawn.com/ https://lemonspawn.com/ A language (Turbo Rascal Syntax Error), inspired by turbo pascal, that compiles to many of the old processors, including C64 etc.
- timbit42 2y ago
  Turbo Pascal compiled on the native hardware though.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Turbo Pascal was my first "real" language. Not CP/M, but Macintosh, ha ha. I was recently able to recover some games I wrote in the late 80's, early 90's and to get some of them to function correctly I had to re-learn Pascal. That too was a rabbit hole.
- murrayb 2y ago
  Also the first real programming language I learned, on an early version of DOS (3.?). I wrote a utility to encode data which was burnt to Eeproms for VHF radio's (fixed base units) I don't remember the details but it was cool to write a tool to solve a problem. Fun times.
- GiorgioG 2y ago
  Same here - I still have my Turbo Pascal 5.0 install disks!
  - 7ep 2y ago
    same. I even have my first disk of turbo pascal programs, written by my grandad, on github: https://github.com/byronka/turbopascal https://github.com/byronka/turbopascal
gfosco 2y ago
I remember being an early teenager on IRC and joining a small BBS development team. I said I knew Pascal, but that was a fib... I did learn it quickly, though, and used it for many years. I can still find the code online, and see my contribution which I get a kick out of... It was a tool that you entered colored ascii frames for an animated "press any key to continue" prompt, and it output a valid pascal function file for that animation.
coliveira 2y ago
Turbo Pascal was a fantastic language for the time. However it was exclusive to Borland so other companies won by using standard C and C++, which could compile code for several machines and OSs, and avoided lock up to a single company (Borland).
- CRConrad 2y ago
  Turbo Pascal wasn't a language; it was a product, an IDE. The language was Pascal, and there were compilers (and I suppose IDEs) available from other vendors besides Borland. So no lock-in. (Well, not on the language itself. If you used too many of Borland's extensions to it, then it took a while for other vendors to catch up. But AFAICR and AIUI, many of them did, after a while; Borland set kind of an "extended" or "industry" standard.)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
layer8 2y ago
Took me a moment to parse “readbale” correctly. ;)
- pamoroso 2y ago
  Author here. LOL fixed, thanks.
stevekemp 2y ago
I've had a lot of fun with Turbo Pascal over recent years. Simple single-board computers are easily available from tindie, etc, and even without that there are a lot of CP/M emulators out there. I hacked up a simple emulator in golang for mac/linux/bsd - https://github.com/skx/cpmulator/ https://github.com/skx/cpmulator/ and there's a link to a set of binaries for turbo pascal, and instructions for using it available here: https://github.com/skx/cpm-dist/tree/master/P https://github.com/skx/cpm-dist/tree/master/P There's a highly related post on the front-page right now is about building your own Z80 computer, which would be ideal for running CP/M and thus Turbo Pascal! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41398629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41398629
dpflug 2y ago
Pascal is still kicking around in the modern realm: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

68 points by AlexeyBrin 2y ago

At the time of the release of Turbo Pascal 3.x, the IDE's on the CP/M version and MS-DOS version were almost identical. I suspect that the author was using TP 4.x or later on MS-DOS. Turbo Pascal on CP/M was a sweet spot among the development tools of the day. As the author describes, the IDE was very pleasant to use, compile-times were speedy, the generated code was compact, and the language implementation permitted a nice mix of high-level constructs with low-level access.

pamoroso 2y ago
Author here. Yes, on MS-DOS I used Turbo Pascal versions later than 4.
kjs3 2y ago
I think there's a lot of us that got spoiled by the TP IDE. It was night and day more productive than the contemporary environments (particularly on CP/M). Other Pascal (and other) compilers might have been 'better' in some ways, but noone really had the edit->compile->fix workflow in one mostly seemless, easy to use package.

kvakkefly 2y ago

You might enjoy the rabbit hole my friend dug into when he created TRSE: https://lemonspawn.com/ https://lemonspawn.com/ A language (Turbo Rascal Syntax Error), inspired by turbo pascal, that compiles to many of the old processors, including C64 etc.

timbit42 2y ago
Turbo Pascal compiled on the native hardware though.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Turbo Pascal was my first "real" language. Not CP/M, but Macintosh, ha ha. I was recently able to recover some games I wrote in the late 80's, early 90's and to get some of them to function correctly I had to re-learn Pascal. That too was a rabbit hole.

murrayb 2y ago
Also the first real programming language I learned, on an early version of DOS (3.?). I wrote a utility to encode data which was burnt to Eeproms for VHF radio's (fixed base units) I don't remember the details but it was cool to write a tool to solve a problem. Fun times.
GiorgioG 2y ago
Same here - I still have my Turbo Pascal 5.0 install disks!
- 7ep 2y ago
  same. I even have my first disk of turbo pascal programs, written by my grandad, on github: https://github.com/byronka/turbopascal https://github.com/byronka/turbopascal

gfosco 2y ago

I remember being an early teenager on IRC and joining a small BBS development team. I said I knew Pascal, but that was a fib... I did learn it quickly, though, and used it for many years. I can still find the code online, and see my contribution which I get a kick out of... It was a tool that you entered colored ascii frames for an animated "press any key to continue" prompt, and it output a valid pascal function file for that animation.

coliveira 2y ago

Turbo Pascal was a fantastic language for the time. However it was exclusive to Borland so other companies won by using standard C and C++, which could compile code for several machines and OSs, and avoided lock up to a single company (Borland).

CRConrad 2y ago
Turbo Pascal wasn't a language; it was a product, an IDE. The language was Pascal, and there were compilers (and I suppose IDEs) available from other vendors besides Borland. So no lock-in. (Well, not on the language itself. If you used too many of Borland's extensions to it, then it took a while for other vendors to catch up. But AFAICR and AIUI, many of them did, after a while; Borland set kind of an "extended" or "industry" standard.)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

layer8 2y ago

Took me a moment to parse “readbale” correctly. ;)

pamoroso 2y ago
Author here. LOL fixed, thanks.

stevekemp 2y ago

I've had a lot of fun with Turbo Pascal over recent years. Simple single-board computers are easily available from tindie, etc, and even without that there are a lot of CP/M emulators out there. I hacked up a simple emulator in golang for mac/linux/bsd - https://github.com/skx/cpmulator/ https://github.com/skx/cpmulator/ and there's a link to a set of binaries for turbo pascal, and instructions for using it available here: https://github.com/skx/cpm-dist/tree/master/P https://github.com/skx/cpm-dist/tree/master/P There's a highly related post on the front-page right now is about building your own Z80 computer, which would be ideal for running CP/M and thus Turbo Pascal! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41398629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41398629

dpflug 2y ago

Pascal is still kicking around in the modern realm: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/