TopSpeed Environment

One unusual aspect of the TopSpeed system was that you could buy variants of the development system for Modula-2, C, C++ and Pascal that all shared a back end. Not only could you call C, C++ or Pascal code from the Modula compiler (and vice versa) but with later incarnations of the system you could mix and match the languages in one source file without resorting to any containers. An unique feature in its time and only few other development systems have offered similar features since. After Clarion took over the sales of the TopSpeed system the Clarion 4GL database language was ported to the TopSpeed system (and remains based on it to this day) and became one of the interchangeable front ends.

The development environment also contained an automatic make facility, an editor, librarian, source-level debugger and sundry minor utilities. It was available in two versions the standard version contained the environment, tools and compiler while the TopSpeed Extended Edition basically bundled the standard edition with TopSpeed TechKit.

Another unusual and somewhat unique aspect of the system was its ability to make multi-threaded code and dynamic libraries (DLLs) for DOS. The TopSpeed system was developed under OS/2 v1.x and the developers were so taken with the threading model that they duplicated it for the DOS environment giving you not only the obvious benefit of being able to make multi-threaded DOS applications but also the option of making portable multi-threaded apps since the TS version for doses copied the OS/2 version down to a tee.