The Howdy Glossary

Turbo Basic, developed by Borland in the early 1980s, is a specialized dialect of the BASIC programming language designed to run more efficiently on MS-DOS platforms. By making direct calls to the PC's BIOS and hardware, Turbo Basic optimized compilation speed and performance, appealing to developers seeking high-performance capabilities. Although it was highly popular during the DOS era for these advantages over other BASIC flavors, Turbo Basic has become largely obsolete with technological advancements and the emergence of modern programming languages.

Borland, renowned for its range of development tools and software products, significantly contributed to the tech industry with its Turbo series. Led by notable figures like Philippe Kahn, Borland developed Turbo Basic alongside other tools within their development ecosystem. The primary goal was to provide programmers with a tool that could harness the underlying hardware power effectively. This direct-access approach allowed Turbo Basic to achieve higher speeds than other BASIC dialects by bypassing layers of abstraction crucial for creating efficient DOS-based applications.

Turbo Basic stood out among competitors like Microsoft's QuickBASIC and GW-BASIC due to its exceptional speed in code compilation and execution achieved through direct BIOS and hardware calls. Its integration with Borland's Turbo Vision library further enhanced user interface development and data management capabilities. These features positioned it as an attractive choice for developers needing high-performance solutions on MS-DOS platforms in the 1980s despite facing competition from other high-level languages like Pascal and C. The combination of speed optimization, comprehensive toolset integration, and ease of application development solidified Turbo Basic as a powerful tool favored by programmers during its heyday.