[sehugg]

I sometimes wonder what "Turbo Ada" would have looked like, but I think it would have probably looked like later versions of Borland Pascal. Things like generics and exceptions would have taken some of the "turbo" out of the compiler and runtime -- the code generator didn't even get a non-peephole optimizer until 32-bit Delphi, it would have been too slow.

It might be nice to have Ada's tasks driven by DOS interrupts, though. I think GNAT did this.

[jll29]

I have not seen it, but there is something close to what you ask about: Turbo Modula-2 (an implementation of MODULA-2 written by Martin Odersky), as both MODULA-2 and PASCAL were Niklaus Wirth-invented languages that looks very similar to Ada:

"Shortly before we finished our compiler, Borland came out with Turbo Pascal, and they were considering going into the Modula-2 market as well. In fact, Borland decided to buy our Modula-2 compiler to be sold under the name of Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M alongside an IBM PC version they wanted to develop. We offered to do the IBM PC version for them, but they told us they had it already covered. Unfortunately that version took them much longer than planned. By the time it came out, three or four years later, their implementor team had split from the company, and it became known as TopSpeed Modula-2. In the absence of an IBM-PC version, Borland never put any marketing muscle behind Turbo-Modula-2, so it remained rather obscure." -- https://www.artima.com/articles/the-origins-of-scala

[ako]

I think Oracle PlSQL was also based on Ada, basically Ada + SQL embedded. So it may be the widest used version of "Ada".

[OneWingedShark]

Pretty much [close enough for government work]; see: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7764656/who-is-diana-and...

[twoodfin]

Wow, that’s a factoid I’d love to learn more about!

[ako]

https://oracle-internals.com/blog/2020/04/29/a-not-so-brief-...

[Abstract_Typist]

https://www.petefinnigan.com/weblog/archives/archive-042020....

[pjmlp]

Ada did not took off during the glory MS-DOS/Windows 3.x Borland days exactly because of Turbo Pascal.

Note that the Martin Odersky of Scala fame was one of the main developers of Turbo Modula-2, that Borland killed shortly thereafter. They were also rather quick to get rid of Turbo Basic (which I had quite some fun with).

With Turbo Pascal absorving the Object Pascal ideas from Apple, and some of the key features from Modula-2, there was not much left from Ada 83 that was relevant for MS-DOS programmers.

However nowadays between FreePascal, Delphi, and Ada, I would probably pick Ada, given its industry role, and besides Ada Core, there are actually other six vendors still in business.