[HN Gopher] Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)
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       Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)
        
       Author : arkj
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2022-03-11 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (prog21.dadgum.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (prog21.dadgum.com)
        
       | hnlmorg wrote:
       | Amusing article.
       | 
       | Turbo Pascal was an awesome IDE. I remember writing a lots of DOS
       | software for it. Including a graphical shell (like early
       | Windows).
        
         | lastdong wrote:
         | Borlando Turbos included amazing docs accessible within the
         | IDE, with useful code examples one could quickly copy+paste and
         | try. Great time to learn, before msdn collection, or the web as
         | we know it now.
        
         | mrlonglong wrote:
         | With a DOS extender you could do a proper GUI shell and not
         | worry about memory constraints if you had the memory.
        
           | hnlmorg wrote:
           | I was still at high school though so my graphical shell was
           | pretty limited. I'm still pretty impressed I pulled off what
           | I did though. Just goes to show how easy Pascal was.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843140 - April 2020 (170
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15104766 - Aug 2017 (15
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11733610 - May 2016 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4592997 - Sept 2012 (58
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3175629 - Oct 2011 (114
       | comments)
        
         | miohtama wrote:
         | The real question, what these kind of articles do not ask, is
         | why Turbo Pascal was smaller?
         | 
         | Hand written assembly was optimised, Pascal is easy to compile
         | language, but there are a lot of other things
         | 
         | - Segmented 16 bit pointers - No graphics or images - Limited
         | OS - no glibc, could only save A: and C: drives - Computers
         | could not hibernate or sleep - Computers did not have periheral
         | devices or needed special software: printer, mouse - No network
         | - No multitasking - No portability
         | 
         | For the editor itself
         | 
         | - No autocomplete - No colours - Not very useful error messages
         | - VI like navigation experience (got much better in 5 years
         | with Turbo Vision IDE framework)
         | 
         | Also
         | 
         | - All documentation was in a dead tree format
         | 
         | For the good reference point on sizes, the bible text is 4-5
         | MB.
        
       | aidenn0 wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | pkaye wrote:
       | In comparison, you can get TCC (tiny compiler) which is 100KB in
       | size and can produce 32/64 bit code, compile the Linux kernel and
       | probably better optimizations.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler
        
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