In 1983, I was working for Softsel Computer Products (Softsel) in the product evaluation, support and training group. Softsel had a booth at the Fall 1983 COMDEX (Computer Dealer Expo) conference (November 28 to December 2) in the Las Vegas Convention Center. I sat at a pod in the booth to answer questions about Softsel, products we distributed and to talk with software and device manufacturers that might be looking to have their products distributed to computer stores.
During the convention Philippe Kahn (PK) walked by the Softsel booth and stopped for a moment. I said hello to him (not knowing anything about him nor his company). During the conversation, we talked about programming and developer tools. PK mentioned that he had a Pascal compiler that he was selling but that he was not looking to have it distributed (he was selling it direct to programmers using direct mail and an ad in Byte Magazine). Before he left the booth, he gave me two floppy disks containing copies of Turbo Pascal 1.0 (8″ CPM-80 and 5.25 PC-DOS).
On one of my breaks, I took the floppy disks into a booth “office” that we had for meetings that also had an IBM PC. I was very excited to see what PK had since I had learned Pascal in 1972 while I was a Computer Science major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I put in the 5.25 floppy disk and started the Turbo.com executable and up popped a menu with a few options. I selected the editor and typed in a short command line “Hello World” program and tried to run it. Amazingly it compiled blazingly fast and the app started up.
I had to tell my co-worker and friend Spencer Leyton about this Pascal compiler and how important it was for the CPM and PC programming world. From that day on, Spencer talked with PK to try to convince him to allow Softsel to distribute Turbo Pascal to its network of computer store accounts. While it took awhile to convince PK, Spencer eventually got PK to agree to a distribution contract. Spencer went on to get a job at Borland. I continued working at Softsel for awhile and eventually Spencer convinced PK to interview me for a job. My job interview was on PK’s racing sailboat in Monterey Bay. We had dinner afterwards at the Crow’s Nest restaurant at the Santa Cruz harbor. I went back to Los Angeles and was given a job offer. I accepted the offer and started in June of 1985 (a little less that 2 years after I first met PK). I enjoyed the privilege of working with Anders Hejlsberg and a talented global team of dedicated employees for more than three decades (and about 4 million air miles).
I seems unreal that its been almost 40 years since I first met PK and first tried Turbo Pascal. It’s also been more than 50 years since I first tried the Pascal language while I was in college. Back then you could build programs for two platforms: PC-DOS and CPM-80. Most amazingly, you can still create “textbook” Pascal applications with every release of Turbo, Borland, Kylix and Delphi Pascal compilers. And, with Delphi, you can create modern applications that can run on desktops, web servers, clouds and mobile devices including Win32, Win64, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux.
Hello World created using the RAD Studio 11.3 console application project wizard
Minimalist Hello World Pascal program created in RAD Studio 11.3.
I still enjoy writing programs most every day using RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder in my semi-retired software engineer activities. Programming keeps my brain alive and my spirits soaring.
Happy 40th Birthday Turbo Pascal v1.0!
Marco Cantu, Delphi and RAD Studio Product Manager, recently posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) a hint about an upcoming Delphi release’s Easter egg.
My hugs and love go out to Philippe Kahn, Spencer Leyton, Anders Hejlsberg and the thousands and thousands of Borland/Embarcadero family and community members 🙂
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Would it be possible that Philippe Kahn came to your booth just want to recruit some potential staff like Spencer and yourself?
Maybe, he always was very good at spotting genuine talent.
Wow you certainly brought back some memories from the past. I went through all versions of TP from 1 to 7, then TP for Windows 1.5, I hated TPW and couldn’t get on with it at all. I then had Delphi 1 through tp Embarcadero Delphi XE but haven’t done any commercial programming for well over 10 years now. I’ve downloaded the Delphi Community Edition just to have a look at how things have progressed. Thanks for the memories.
A phenomenal ride and memories of a very exciting time! It’s easy to forget that in those days, compilers were very expensive tools barely accessible to independent developers. Turbo Pascal changed the lives of many people for the better. It led me to, for example, to work for TurboPower and enjoy some truly unforgettable experiences.
Having Borland and TurboPower Software both located in Scotts Valley was something really special.
“I first met the famous DavidI 20 years ago almost to the day in Amsterdam, NL” 🙂
Seems like just last week 😀
In helping a friend get a well used Kaypro to boot and dim CRT. A like new Kaypro was found and I kept the ToolBox SS/DD Version 1.0 and Turbo Pascal Version 2.0 5 1/4 disks as a finders fee out of the disks the machine came with. This is the first mention of the Kaypro, CP/M 80 products that Borland had. Thanks.
My first use of Borland product was taking a night class at a community college using Turbo C around 1990. Some of instruction referenced COCO Radio Shack color computer since 4-bit easier to draw the buss and ring buffer. The Instructor used Borland product for industrial controls under OS/2 at work and could only teach 8-bit and 16-bit Dos at night.
Time will tell when the CP/M vintage WordStar Commands like Ctrl-K-I and Ctrl-K-U are retired. The recent improvements in voice-to-text allow a “Borland SideKick” like program to transcribe any mutterings and phone calls taken while coding. 🙂
I remember studying Sidekick code to write my own TSR (Terminate-Stay-Resident) DOS application. The program used BIOS keyboard interruptions to activate the background task. And interacted with Lotus 123 spreadsheet by virtually typing real time quotes on the sheet cells. That was a precursor to the Excel DDE data exchange.
Great times. Compiler and IDE were 40kB and lightning fast on a Z80 4MHz machine.
I fondly recall those days too, David! I also was amazed that a compiler that normally would have sold for a thousand $$ or more, not retail but through a live human salesperson, was only $50 and could be bought mail order back then! I joined Borland in 1991 and was there for over five years, and that was certainly a highlight of my young career at the time. Just had dinner with Eric & Tamah last week, aamof!! Cheers!
What great memories. One forgets how long it’s been. Haven’t thought about the TurboPower guys in forever.
David I. and I, were on a break at Sofitel, musing about where we would like to work next. David said that his family owned a cabin above Scott’s Valley; and that he’d love to find a job near there, so he could live in the cabin, among the redwoods. But, “alas,” he said, “there are no opportunities near there.”
Soon after he said that, I accepted a job at Borland, employee number 12, I believe that I was. I mentioned to Philippe that we should bring David onboard. Then the three of us were soon aboard Philippe’s yacht, PK and I interviewing David. David was hired soon thereafter.
Onboard Philippe’s yacht, David and I, both seeming to always be getting in the way of Philippe’s handling of the 30+ foot boat, were basically ballast.
With PK’s consent, I offered a position to David. I always thought of David as our universal fielder, able to handle whatever was asked of him in our rapidly growing business. David was one of the employees essential to Borland’s success. Another was Marc Randolph (thereafter, Netflix’s co-founder). Both David and Marc were self-starters.
Borland was a very high tension place of employment; and an exciting place to be in the rocket ship ride that was the software industry of the 1980s.