Turbo Vision
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 14 terminal UI libraries by recommenders
People recommend it as a long-admired object-oriented framework for building terminal user interfaces, praising its original DOS-era design. Main caveat: documentation is hard to find.
People recommend it as a long-admired object-oriented framework for building terminal user interfaces, praising its original DOS-era design. Main caveat: documentation is hard to find.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 26
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 84%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 26 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Object-oriented design and architecture
“Besides a nice OOP architecture, collections, iteration with callbacks, serialization, in a nice AOT compiled language with blazing compile times.”
Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “A terminal emulator that runs in your terminal. Powered by Turbo Vision” “had a great object model, in which you could derive built-in classes implementing controls, windows, validators etc.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Show HN: Trust – Coding Rust like it's 1989” “The developer experience with Turbo Pascal (by which I guess I mostly mean Turbo Vision) was honestly pretty great”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” - Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available”
Great for building terminal UIs
“I really haven't seen anything better for making TUIs than Borland's Turbo Vision framework”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs” “Building TUIs was already super easy in 1990 with Turbo Vision and Clipper on MS-DOS”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Building a TUI is easy now” “one of the greatest TUI toolkits of the DOS era”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” - Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool”
- Comment from 4 May 2026 in “The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility”
Nostalgia for its DOS-era design
“something that I could already enjoy in 1990's with Turbo Vision”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Rust Is Just a Tool” “Turbo Vision for a long time was for me like a golden standard.”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port” “working with this TV library scratches my nostalgia itch :D”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port” - Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “A terminal emulator that runs in your terminal. Powered by Turbo Vision”
Modernized port with Unicode support
“the author did very good job modernizing the library and i love it”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port” “saw it was updated for Unicode, etc”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Documentation is hard to find
“when you work with TV and ask google - you usually get... not much.”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port” “If anything such documentation is what's lacking nowadays.”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Turbo Vision 2.0 – a modern port” Dated, pushes TUI limits
“TurboVision was awesome, but it was pushing the boundary of TUI”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” “I've had enough of turbo vision back in the 90s”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase”
Other terminal UI libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal UI libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratatui | 57 | 6 | 90% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Bubble Tea | 37 | 16 | 70% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Textual | 34 | 2 | 94% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Turbo VisionThis page | 26 | 5 | 84% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Ink | 13 | 21 | 38% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
39 of the 42 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“With Turbo Vision for the 80s.”
“Turbo Vision, my first understanding of a good OOP framework.”
“were great productivity tools”
“go check what Turbo Vision in Turbo Pascal 6 already offered in the world of MS-DOS PCs in the early 1990's”
“had a great object model, in which you could derive built-in classes implementing controls, windows, validators etc.”
“still the only good TUI framework”
“I loved the design so I used basic ideas for my own DOS UI library”
“Invariably, Turbo Vision is better.”
“working with this TV library scratches my nostalgia itch :D”
“when you work with TV and ask google - you usually get... not much.”
“Warm memories... I had an idea to do that on rust”
“relies on libcursesw for terminal abstraction instead of hard-coding ANSI sequences”
“would prefer TV and so considered a wrapper”
“If anything such documentation is what's lacking nowadays.”
“Free Vision doesn't use those as it implements the original Turbo Vision API”
“saw it was updated for Unicode, etc”
“all the goodies that Turbo Vision offered as a framework”
“I am still wishing for the "real" Turbo Vision, the Pascal version”
“"including" a module by "#define"-ing feels like a "hack"”
“DOS still a target. Respect.”
“fell in love with the bluish TUIs that anyone could make”
“the author did very good job modernizing the library and i love it”
“Turbo Vision for a long time was for me like a golden standard.”
“This is a cultural treasure.”
“I'd recommend a more CUA-esque interface like turbo vision”
“The developer experience with Turbo Pascal (by which I guess I mostly mean Turbo Vision) was honestly pretty great”
“TurboVision was awesome, but it was pushing the boundary of TUI”
“the Rolls-Royce of TUI frameworks”
“one of the greatest TUI toolkits of the DOS era”
“I'm with you on the Turbo Vision love, though.”
“something that I could already enjoy in 1990's with Turbo Vision”
“I really haven't seen anything better for making TUIs than Borland's Turbo Vision framework”
“actual great TUIs more or less died in the 1990s. You can google Turbo Vision for examples.”
“Building TUIs was already super easy in 1990 with Turbo Vision and Clipper on MS-DOS”
“Besides a nice OOP architecture, collections, iteration with callbacks, serialization, in a nice AOT compiled language with blazing compile times.”
“it really made me miss the OG solid terminal UI library”
“much less updated, Unicode, cross platform, 24-bit color?”
“I got into Turbo Vision, followed by Turbo Pascal 1.5 for Windows 3.1”
“I've had enough of turbo vision back in the 90s”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.