[mobilio]

Delphi 7 was last of greatest IDE (on that time) exists. New one add .Net and became larger and unstable. Probably 2007 bring stability.

I also start with Pascal (Turbo 3, 4, 5, 5.5 (greatest!), 6 and little bit 7). Then jump to Delphi (all 1-7) and then abandon it.

[defined]

Yeah, I used Turbo Pascal, starting with TP 1.0 on 8 MHz, 8 bit Z80 with 64kB RAM (entire compiler and TUI in 64kB! compiled even large programs in a few seconds).

Much kudos must go to Anders Hejlsberg, who wrote the compiler in assembly language, starting on it at age 20[1]. Hejlsberg went on to create Delphi, J++, C#, and TypeScript.

I still regard TP 1.0 as one of the best software products I've used, and feel it is a testament to brilliant, performant, compact software development - and to its developer.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg