undefined | Better HN

0 pointspjmlp4y ago0 comments

Apparently you missed the whole TP 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 and TPW 1.5 offerings.

And Turbo C 2.0 was quickly replaced by Turbo C++.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

cagey4y ago· 2 in thread

> Apparently you missed the whole TP 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 and TPW 1.5 offerings.

I didn't miss them, but because IIRC all the versions you mentioned (and also Delphi 1.0) were x86 16-bit (only) Borland/Turbo Pascal evolutions having effectively the same memory model support as TP 4.0, felt they were not important to enumerate. These releases certainly added other features, but IIRC made no architectural changes affecting the performance of their generated code on the 16-bit x86 platform.

(Again IIRC) all Borland C/C++ variants >= TC 1.0 offered the same 16-bit x86 memory model (and ability to manually mixing memory models) support (that already being comprehensive), with gradually improving codegen optimizations.

My larger proposition is that the perception of (Turbo) Pascal's performance being perceived as poorer than that of C (in the interval when Pascal was being eclipsed by C/C++), while accurate, was influenced to some degree by the incidental factor of the dominant x86 CPU architecture of the day having a segmented architecture upon which extraction of optimal performance across the range of applications necessitated the extensive/comprehensive memory model support found in all competitive C/C++ compilers of that day, which none of the competing Pascal compilers (which is to say: Borland's plus MS' QuickPascal (which implemented the Borland language definition [1])) possessed. It would have taken those Pascal vendors more resources to add such memory model support (and other optimizations offered by their C/C++ competition), and they elected not to do so. Borland moved on to Delphi which continued the pattern wherein raw performance of the Pascal compiler's generated code (x86 32-bit as well as 16-bit) lagged behind that of the C/C++ competition; Borland's finite resources were expended on the IDE & RAD aspect of Delphi rather than on codegen. "The rest is history". But I don't think there was anything intrinsic to Borland's Pascal dialect (the only one I ever used) which doomed it to take a backseat to C in terms of performance: I used both TC and TP 4+ without ever feeling a vast difference between the two languages (and found many aspect of Pascal preferable to those of C/C++).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Pascal

pjmlpOP4y ago

Borland Pascal compilers that I mentioned had exactly the same memory models than their C++ counterparts, specially the Windows 3.1 versions, there was no difference between TPW 1.5 and TC++ 3.1.

Borland Pascal 7.0 introduced support for protected mode.

cagey4y ago

> Borland Pascal compilers that I mentioned had exactly the same memory models than their C++ counterparts, specially the Windows 3.1 versions, there was no difference between TPW 1.5 and TC++ 3.1.

The Turbo C 1.0 User's Guide [1] page 244 (257) "Turbo C's Six Memory Models" lists these as tiny, small, medium, compact, large, huge. Also, page 220 (233) "The near, far, and huge Modifiers".

You claim that these same capabilities were present in TP 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 and TPW 1.5. Can you provide a reference for that?

[1] http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/borland/tur...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse