Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpcvca!scott From: scott@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Scott Linn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Borland International Message-ID: <5640014@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM> Date: 26 Oct 89 18:38:05 GMT References: Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, Oregon Lines: 31 / hpcvca:comp.sys.ibm.pc / bjornb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn H Bjornsson) / 5:07 pm Oct 23, 1989 / >Turbo Pascal is based on a danish pascal compiler, which I think was (is?) >called Poly Pascal. Turbo Prolog is also a danish product. >I don't know about the other products, Borland probably bought them and >changed the label. >As for Philip Kahn, I very much doubt that he exists. >-- >Bjorn Heimir Bjornsson Internet: bjornb@rhi.hi.is >University of Iceland UUCP: {mcvax,enea}!hafro!rhi!bjornb >---------- What a bunch of horse-hocky. I had lunch with Phillipe Kahn at Stanford, and he looked pretty alive to me... As he told the story, there were a bunch of people who wanted to make some money writing software. So, they started writing some packages (I think it was statistics). Anyway, they were extremely disappointed with the compilers available at that time, so they just wrote a new one. They were demoing their package to someone, and it crashed or the customer asked about an enhancement. The person demoing then quickly went into the compiler and fixed the problem. The customer then said "forget about (xyz), I want to see that compiler!". The customer convinced them that there would be a very large market for such a compiler, so they decided to "try" to sell it, and the rest is history. Their company is in Scotts Valley, near Santa Cruz. Phillipe will be the one with the loud hawaiian shirt on. Scott Linn