Turbo C is a discontinued

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE) and

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

for the

C programming language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

from

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computing technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was developing and selling software development and software deployment products. B ...

. 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

Turbo C++ Turbo C++ is a discontinued C++ compiler and integrated development environment originally from Borland. It was designed as a home and hobbyist counterpart for Borland C++. As the developer focused more on professional programming tools, later T ...

. In 2006, Borland reintroduced the Turbo

moniker A nickname, in some circumstances also known as a sobriquet, or informally a "moniker", is an informal substitute for the proper name of a person, place, or thing, used to express affection, playfulness, contempt, or a particular character trait ...

Early history

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

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Pascal (programming language), Pascal running on the operating systems CP/M, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. ...

product and it became a popular choice when developing applications for the PC. Borland followed up that success by releasing Turbo Prolog (in 1986), and in 1987,

Turbo Basic PowerBASIC, formerly Turbo Basic, is the brand of several commercial compilers by PowerBASIC Inc. that compile a dialect of the BASIC programming language. There are both MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, Windows versions, and two kinds of the latte ...

and Turbo C. Turbo C has similar properties to Turbo Pascal: an

, a fast compiler (though not near the speed of Turbo Pascal), a good editor, and a competitive price. Turbo C competed with other professional programming tools, such as

Microsoft C Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) is a compiler for the C, C++, C++/CLI and C++/CX programming languages by Microsoft. MSVC is proprietary software; it was originally a standalone product but later became a part of Visual Studio and made available i ...

, Watcom C, and

Lattice C The Lattice C Compiler was released in June 1982 by Lifeboat Associates and was the first C compiler for the IBM Personal Computer. The compiler sold for $500 and would run on PC DOS or MS-DOS (which at the time were the same product with differ ...

, while Turbo Pascal was successful with hobbyists and schools as well as professional programmers.

Version history

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

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

s. Like many Borland products of the time, the software was bought from another company (in this case Wizard C compiler by Bob Jervis), and branded with the "Turbo" name. It ran in of memory. It allowed

inline assembly In computer programming, an inline assembler is a feature of some compilers that allows low-level code written in assembly language to be embedded within a program, among code that otherwise has been compiled from a higher-level language such as ...

with full access to C symbolic names and structures, supported all memory models, and offered optimizations for speed, size,

constant folding Constant folding and constant propagation are related compiler optimizations used by many modern compilers. An advanced form of constant propagation known as sparse conditional constant propagation can more accurately propagate constants and sim ...

, and jump elimination. 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

diskette A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s of uncompressed files, and came with sample C programs, including a stripped down spreadsheet called mcalc. This version introduced the 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

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

. It was also available bundled with

Turbo Assembler Turbo Assembler (TASM) is an assembler for software development published by Borland in 1989. It runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS and compatibles for Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Borland's other language produc ...

and

Turbo Debugger Turbo Debugger (TD) is a machine-level debugger for DOS executables, intended mainly for debugging Borland Turbo Pascal, and later Turbo C programs, sold by Borland. It is a full-screen debugger displaying both Turbo Pascal or Turbo C source and ...

. Turbo C 2.0 was also released (in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

only) for the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

; the program was not maintained by Borland, but sold and renamed PureC. This version introduced the header file, which provided the

Borland Graphics Interface The Borland Graphics Interface, also known as BGI, was a graphics library bundled with several Borland compilers for the DOS operating systems since 1987. BGI was also used to provide graphics for many other Borland products including the Quattro ...

already included in

. With the release of

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 Cfront was the original compiler for C++ (then known as " C with Classes") from around 1983, which converted C++ to C; developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at AT&T Bell Labs. The preprocessor did not understand all of the language and much of the code w ...

Freeware release

In 2006, Borland's successor,

Embarcadero Technologies Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. is a U.S.-based computer software company that develops, manufactures, licenses and supports products and services related to software through several product divisions. It was founded in 1993, went public in 2000 ...

, re-released Turbo C and the MS-DOS versions of the Turbo C++ compilers as

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

Reception

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

'' in January 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". In a February 1989 overview of optimizing C compilers, ''BYTE'' said that Turbo C Professional 2.0 "is no exception" to the company's "well-deserved reputation for pricing good software". The magazine reported that Turbo C "compiles faster—''much'' faster—than any other compiler we reviewed", and praised the addition of Turbo Debugger ("the best source debugger"). ''BYTE'' concluded that Turbo C did not produce the fastest or smallest executable, "but it's definitely the one that is most fun to use".

References

External links