Turbo Pascal 3.0 was the bridge between the "hobbyist" era of BASIC and the "professional" era of C++. It taught a generation of programmers the importance of structured programming and "Strong Typing."

Turbo Pascal 3 introduced several features that set it apart from its predecessors and contemporaries: Turtle Graphics:

Released in late 1985 (and widely distributed in 1986), TP3 was distributed on a single 360KB 5.25-inch floppy disk. No installation was required. You inserted the disk, typed TURBO , and within a second, you were looking at the legendary blue IDE.

Released in 1985 (with minor bug fixes in version 3.02 in September 1986), was a landmark for Borland International. It solidified the product as the industry standard for fast, affordable, and professional-grade software development on MS-DOS and CP/M systems. Key Features and Improvements Turbo Pascal 3.0 compiler and code generation internals