They don’t make ’em like that any more: Borland Turbo Pascal 7

All, in all, It was much easier to program for Windows using Turbo Pascal 7 than with anything else. Not only did it provide a programming model that matched the way the Windows user interface worked, the application itself had a Windows graphical interface – many Windows programming tools at that time actually ran under MSDOS, and were entirely text-based. TP 7 also had fully-graphical tools for designing the user interface elements, like menus and icons. Laying out a menu using a definition file with an obscure format, using Windows Notepad, was never an agreeable experience. Microsoft did produce graphical tools for this kind of operation, but Turbo Pascal combined them into a seamless IDE. All I had to do to build and run my programs was to hit the F7 key. I could even set breakpoints for the debugger, just by clicking a line of code. As I said, common enough today, but revolutionary for early Windows programming.
↫ Kevin Boone

Even as a mere child who didn’t even know what programming was, I was aware of Turbo Pascal. It was a name that you just encountered all over the place as a DOS and Windows 3.x user, even if you didn’t know what it was. The author of this article, Kevin Boone, even claims Turbo Pascal “contributed to the widespread uptake, and eventual domination, of Microsoft Windows on desktop PCs”, which is not something I can verify because I was far too young, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it holds water.

This article made me wonder if Pascal is easy to learn, and if someone wanting to learn programming can do worse than start with a Windows 3.x virtual machine and Turbo Pascal. Sure, it’s probably not very relevant today, but it might serve as a good, solid base to work from?

I have no idea.