Ilya Birman continues his (now) series of the historical user interfaces with the post “UI Museum: Turbo Pascal 7.1“. (I’ve linked previously to his post about Norton Commander).
Turbo Pascal wasn’t my first programming language (some variation of BASIC was), but I’ve spent countless hours coding in Turbo Pascal, both for my studies and outside.
It’s interesting to see how different and, at the same time, similar those interfaces of the past are to those of today. Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) have gone a long way, but their basic principles, as well as some shortcuts and UI elements, are very similar to the 30-old tools.
One thing that I find in common with Ilya’s comments is that the teachers didn’t know or cover all the options. The information was scarce and Google wasn’t around. For many, there was also a language barrier, rendering even the available documentation useless.
Oh, good old times!