Turbo Pascal

Turbo Pascal is a cheap and powerful IDE for the Pascal programming language. The compiler was based on the Blue Label Pascal compiler originally produced for the NasSys cassette based system of the Nascom microcomputers in 1980 by Anders Heljberg. This was first rewritten as the Compass Pascal compiler for the CP/M operationg system and then as the Turbo Pascal compiler for IBM PC's. There is a strong possibility that this is why the original version of Turbo Pascal is known as Turbo Pascal version 3.

When the first version of Turbo Pascal appeared in 1983, the concept of IDEs was relatively uncommon, the integrated Pascal compiler also was of very good quality compared to other Pascal products and was affordable above all. It is likely that Microsoft Pascal was dropped because of the competition provided by Turbo Pascal's good quality and cheap price.

In the early 1990's, Borland dropped Turbo Pascal and replaced it with the RAD environment Delphi, which included the language Object Pascal.