Turbo C

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For technical reasons, "Turbo C#" redirects here. For the C# IDE, see Turbo C Sharp.
Borland Turbo C
Developer(s)Borland
Initial release1987; 37 years ago (1987)
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, MS-DOS
SuccessorTurbo C++
Borland C++
TypeIDE
LicenseProprietary software
Installation disk of Turbo C 1.5

Turbo C is a discontinued integrated development environment (IDE) and compiler for the C programming language from Borland. First introduced in 1987, it was noted for its integrated development environment, small size, fast compile speed, comprehensive manuals and low price.

In May 1990, Borland replaced Turbo C with

moniker
.

Early history

In the early 1980s, Borland enjoyed considerable success with their

Turbo Prolog, and in 1987, Turbo C. Turbo C has similar properties to Turbo Pascal: an integrated development environment, a fast compiler (though not near the speed of Turbo Pascal),[1]
a good editor, and a competitive price.

While Turbo Pascal was successful with hobbyists and schools as well as professional programmers, Turbo C competed with other professional programming tools, such as

Microsoft C, Lattice C, and Watcom C.[citation needed
]

Version history

Version 1.0 (May 13, 1987) offered the first integrated development environment for C on

inline assembly with full access to C symbolic names and structures, supported all memory models, and offered optimizations for speed, size, constant folding, and jump elimination.[3]

Version 1.5 (January 1988) was an incremental improvement over version 1.0. It included more sample programs, improved manuals and bug fixes. It was shipped on five 360 KB

diskettes of uncompressed files, and came with sample C programs, including a stripped down spreadsheet called mcalc
. This version introduced the <conio.h> header file (which provided fast, PC-specific console I/O routines).

Version 2.0 (late 1988) featured the first "blue screen" version, which would be typical of all future Borland releases for

Turbo Debugger. Turbo C 2.0 was also released (in Germany only) for the Atari ST; the program was not maintained by Borland, but sold and renamed PureC. This version introduced the <graphics.h> header file, which provided the Borland Graphics Interface already included in Turbo Pascal
.

With the release of Turbo C++ 1.0 (in 1990), the two products were folded into one and the name "Turbo C" was discontinued. The C++ compiler was developed under contract by a company in San Diego, and was one of the first "true" compilers for C++ (until then, it was common to use pre-compilers that generated C code, ref. Cfront).

Freeware release

In 2006,[citation needed] Borland's successor, Embarcadero Technologies, re-released Turbo C and the MS-DOS versions of the Turbo C++ compilers as freeware.[4][5][6]

Reception

BYTE in 1989 listed Turbo C and Turbo Pascal as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards. Citing their user interface and continued emphasis on speed, the magazine stated that "for rapid prototyping there's not much better".[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Hague, James. "A Personal History of Compilation Speed, Part 2". Programming in the 21st Century. Retrieved 2016-06-05.
  2. ^ Borland Backgrounder, 2/8/99
  3. ^ "Computing Dictionary". Foldoc.org. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  4. ^ Tim DelChiaro (2011-03-28). "Free Borland C++ 5.5 Compiler". Edn.embarcadero.com. Archived from the original on 2015-01-19. Retrieved 2019-09-11.
  5. ^ David Intersimone (2000-02-15) [1989-05-11]. "Antique Software: Turbo C version 2.01". Edn.embarcadero.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-22. Retrieved 2019-09-11.
  6. ^ David Intersimone (2000-04-14) [1991-02-28]. "Antique Software: Turbo C++ version 1.01". Edn.embarcadero.com. Retrieved 2019-09-11.
  7. ^ "The BYTE Awards". BYTE. January 1989. p. 327.

External links

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