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.