Comment by aidenn0

We used Turbo C++ in my HS computer science class, but the AP test was still in Pascal at the time. My dad had an old copy of Turbo Pascal, so I used that to learn enough pascal to pass the test. I was completely blown away by the compilation times. In class, we fought over who got the 2 486 DX2s because you could compile simple programs in under a minute on it. On my wimpy AM386 at home Turbo Pascal compiled from scratch in seconds and did incremental compiles instantaneously.

A couple years later, I encountered common lisp for the first time; it was even better because you could recompile single functions. To this date, I still think very short iteration time is a super-power for program design.