>>>One of the "it almost happened but didn't moments" was in the late 1980's when Borland was seriously looking at a Turbo dBase to complement their Turbo product line. But Phil K just didn't think there was enough justification - he though client-server would have more emphasis.
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>>Turbo Pascal's compiler was fantastic. Turbo Dbase would be interesting...
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>Turbo Pascal and Turbo C were outstanding products. Microsoft C might have had a few more optimization tricks up its sleeve, but Turbo C was overall a better crafted product.
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>By late 1989 the PC world had 2 stellar five star products - Turbo C and FoxPro 1.0. As much as I love SQL Server, I would say those 2 products , with respect to their era, were the greatest software releases we've seen.

I have to agree with Turbo Pascal. At a time when compilers sold for hundreds of dollars, Borland sold it for, what,49 bucks? And it was a good product. It was a game changer.