> I don't use them since the late 90's, but they used to be comparable to contemporary C and C++ MS-DOS/Windows compilers.
There has been an enormous difference in the quality of optimization and code generation since the 1990s, when single-pass compilers such as Turbo Pascal and Delphi were common. At that time you usually went straight from AST to machine code, doing some peephole optimizations along the way, but this is unacceptable today if you want to compete with modern C and C++ compilers (or even Java HotSpot). The introduction of SSA (and along with it GVN, SROA, SCCP, etc.) was a big deal.
What I was trying to say, it that if you put a C or C++ compiler against Turbo Pascal or Delphi compiler of the same age, the latter will compile way faster and generate similar code in terms of quality.
If they had received the same investment as C and C++ had become since those days, the situation would still hold.
But history took another path, so it is kind of moot point now.
There has been an enormous difference in the quality of optimization and code generation since the 1990s, when single-pass compilers such as Turbo Pascal and Delphi were common. At that time you usually went straight from AST to machine code, doing some peephole optimizations along the way, but this is unacceptable today if you want to compete with modern C and C++ compilers (or even Java HotSpot). The introduction of SSA (and along with it GVN, SROA, SCCP, etc.) was a big deal.