Yes, Turbo Pascal was blindingly fast - I could type almost as fast as I could think :) (I mean, even though incrementally compiling my code every few lines) - equivalent or better than a scripting language - at least for small to medium-sized programs. Fantastic for exploratory programming and learning and correcting as you go, though also for bigger, less exploratory stuff. I don't think I've met its match to this day. I read that the Borland developers who created it wrote it in tuned assembly language.

Turbo Pascal was the best, for that time. Unfortunately it didn't really set the standard, as no IDE I've used afterwards has ever been of comparable speed, without any lag anywhere ;)

Exactly what I said in my sibling comment :)