Comment by madmountaingoat
2 days ago
Turbo Pascal wasn't just a good tool, it was a pioneer in how it was marketed and priced. It was relatively affordable, only $49, at a time when tools generally cost in the hundreds. And they ran monthly ads in nearly every computer magazine. If you wanted to hack on things on your PC, and you didn't already work for a company that would buy you to tools, you really had two choices, BASIC and Turbo Pascal.
Turbo Pascal was fantastic when it arrived. A revolution. And not just the affordable price, there was also the "book license". The compiler could be used by any number of people, anywhere, just not at the same time. And suddenly there was speed, very quick development cycle, easy debugging, and, not the least, LOTS of memory unlike other compiler environments I used at the time. The editor and compilers typically used so much memory that there was barely enough room to write your code. Not so with Turbo Pascal.