Learn Turbo Pascal – a Video Series Originally Released on Vhs
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
youtube.comTechstory
calmpositive
Debate
20/100
ProgrammingRetrocomputingTurbo Pascal
Key topics
Programming
Retrocomputing
Turbo Pascal
A YouTube video series on learning Turbo Pascal, originally released on VHS, sparks nostalgia and discussion among commenters about the evolution of programming languages and development environments.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Active discussionFirst comment
40m
Peak period
11
0-2h
Avg / period
4.8
Comment distribution43 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 43 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Oct 11, 2025 at 7:57 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Oct 11, 2025 at 8:37 AM EDT
40m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
11 comments in 0-2h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Oct 12, 2025 at 12:34 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45548457Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:49:46 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
What I like from watching it again: the aspect of structured programming.
It’s quite refreshing to see a language that doesn’t rely so much on brackets.
It even got away without syntax highlighting by using all uppercase REPEAT, BEGIN, END or capitalising function calls.
Thanks for sharing!
http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/cvideo.htm
Oh... And my powerC edition included the full source code of their standard C library!
http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/utility.htm
(it's funny that their store's still up; I wonder if anyone buys from them in 2025)
The manuals were a joy. I read them cover to cover. I think I only skipped one update, up through version 5, and was still using it long after MS-DOS was obsolete.
Today, in my rare moments of writing good code, I program like a Pascal programmer. I think you can easily do worse, but it's hard to do much better. One of the ideas that was prevalent at the time, was that as you learned programming, you should also be learning good programming practices.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/on-error-resume-next
As much as I hate C enemies, I must admit they were for some reason better at standard. If Pascals were such religiously adopting the standard and if C was remaining as fragmented as Pascal, with "otherwise" in one dialect and "else" in another one, then Pascal could win. Probably not the Turbo Pascal as we know it. Another Pascal, standard enough Pascal.
Or maybe it should have been Modula-2. Amiga had TDI Modula-2. Don't know if TopSpeed Modula-2 and TDI Modula-2 were source compatible, but I guess far more than different Pascals.
This table is built by ex. Pascal developer that moved to Ada: https://p2ada.sourceforge.net/pascada.htm
Indeed, Ada's standard conformance is a breathe of fresh air.
But Amiga had no Ada compiler, and had Modula-2 compiler. So for the sake of good guys' winning, if time machine moves me to 80s, I would pick Modula-2 for every platform. Nowadays Ada is a choice of good guy
I find it kinda amusing that Free Pascal was Turbo Pascal compatible from 1997 but it only fully implemented a standard Pascal mode (the compiler supports multiple dialects) just ~10 years ago (and still doesn't support the Extended Pascal syntax).
Modula-2 is a pretty good language, and very small. It was the teaching language for my OS course in college. Then we got into Ada, and I thought it was a much more 'industrial' language; much more batteries included.
Im pretty sure he is willingly sharing it, if there is no copyright issue or similar
NObody seems to remember the superhigh speed of the compiler? :))
It was lightspeed compared to GCP++ or BC++
Write in C, oh, write in C
PASCAL won't quite cut it
Write in C
had this sad moment when i realized i could probably toss all of the books on programming
and this sinking feeling that i dont know how anyone ever sits down to learn this shit ever again
I worked with him at Borland in the early 90’s. He stands out for me because he’s gracious in debate. You don’t mind losing an argument to him.
I did find them, and watched some of it, but the content was not worth preserving.