Borland’s Turbo Pascal was one of the most successful programming tools of all time. It introduced development techniques, such as integrated source-level debugging, that we take for granted today; but which were radical at the time.
TP 7, also known as Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5, was the pinnacle of the Turbo Pascal line, and its end. The name ‘Turbo’ was associated with what were regarded as hobbyist products – ‘Borland Pascal’ was a different, much more expensive, product. But Turbo Pascal was enough for some quite substantial applications, and was very affordable. It was also ‘book licensed’, which I think was a new thing in the software industry. You could buy one copy of TP, and any number of people could use it – but only one at a time. Even when it was distributed on floppy disks, there was no copy protection. (Turbo) Pascal eventually gave way to Delphi which, despite its technical merits, never had the same impact.
