Borland Turbo Basic
This article provides a historical overview of Borland Turbo Basic, a compiler for the BASIC programming language released in the late 1980s. It details the transition from its origins as BASIC/Z to its acquisition by Borland and eventual evolution into PowerBASIC.
Why it matters
Understanding the history of development tools provides insight into the evolution of modern integrated development environments (IDEs).
Turbo BASIC started life as BASIC/Z and written by Robert "Bob" Zale. It was the first interactive compiler running on the CP/M operating system, but in 1987, Borland purchased it and published it for MS-DOS. It was sold only for a couple of years, before being discontinued, so Bob bought the rights back to continue it under the title PowerBASIC.
Aside from being a compiler rather than just an interpreter, it also permitted much larger executable programs to be created. GWBASIC was limited to .BAS (BASIC interpreter code) files of no larger than 64 KB. With Turbo BASIC you could create files of any size as long as it fit into available memory.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in