[MobiusHorizons]

For many people it was the first language they learned, which I think explains most of it. But the tooling was also very fast from a latency perspective, even on the slow hardware of the time, which tends to make for magical memorable experiences.

[spamatica]

And also incredibly small.

Turbo Pascal 2.0 had an IDE with compiler and debugger in a binary less than 60kb (if the info I found googling is true). Of course nowhere near the capabilities of modern environments but state of the art at the time.

[petepete]

The debugging experience I had in Delphi 6-7 was still streets ahead of what I use today in Ruby.

[fuzztester]

>Turbo Pascal 2.0 had an IDE with compiler and debugger in a binary less than 60kb (if the info I found googling is true).

Turbo Pascal 3.0 had an IDE with compiler and debugger in a binary less than 40kb (if the info I found googling is true).

[cylinder714]

Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than

https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html

[fuzztester]

And it (initially at least) cost $50 vs. a few hundred dollars for other compilers of that period, like MS Pascal.