I also used Turbo Pascal at university (around '90 / '91), and while I can remember some growing pains in terms of learning to program I can't recall any such problems that you experienced. My memory is fuzzy on the detail, but I think there was a time in the mid -> late 80s where Turbo Pascal was greatly improved, and become close to the Object Pascal language which is still in use today. I'd be guessing you were using the 'pre-improvements' version of TP. I have to admit, I have a soft-spot for Object Pascal, and still use it fairly often (in a project for a long-standing client; the software was originally developed in TP, and was eventually moved to Delphi 7 which is what I use for maintenance to this day).