Anders Hejlsberg

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Anders Hejlsberg
Anders Hejlsberg.jpg
Born December 1960 (age 57)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Nationality Danish
Education Technical University of Denmark[1]
Occupation Programmer, systems architect
Employer Microsoft[1]
Known for Programming languages Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#,[1] TypeScript
Title Technical Fellow[1]
Awards 2001 Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award[1]


Early life[edit]

Hejlsberg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and studied engineering at the Technical University of Denmark but did not graduate.[3] While at the university in 1980, he began writing programs for the Nascom microcomputer, including a Pascal compiler which was initially marketed as the Blue Label Software Pascal for the Nascom-2. However, he soon rewrote it for CP/M and DOS, marketing it first as Compas Pascal and later as PolyPascal. Later the product was licensed to Borland, and integrated into an IDE to become the Turbo Pascal system. Turbo Pascal competed with PolyPascal. The compiler itself was largely inspired by the "Tiny Pascal" compiler in Niklaus Wirth's "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs", one of the most influential computer science books of the time. Hejlsberg and his partners ran a computer store in Copenhagen and marketed accounting systems. Their company, PolyData, was the distributor for Microsoft products in Denmark which put them at odds with Borland. Philippe Kahn and Hejlsberg first met in 1986. For all those years, Niels Jensen, one of Borland's founders and its majority shareholder, had successfully handled the relationship between Borland and PolyData.[citation needed]

At Borland[edit]

In Borland's hands, Turbo Pascal became one of the most commercially successful Pascal compilers.[4] Hejlsberg remained with PolyData until the company came under financial stress and in 1989 he moved to California to become Chief Engineer at Borland. During this time he developed Turbo Pascal further and became the chief architect for the team that produced Delphi, which replaced Turbo Pascal.

At Microsoft[edit]

Hejlsberg at the Professional Developers Conference 2008.

In 1996, Hejlsberg left Borland and joined Microsoft. One of his first achievements was the J++ programming language and the Windows Foundation Classes; he also became a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and Technical Fellow. Since 2000, he has been the lead architect of the team developing the C# language. In 2012 Hejlsberg announced a new Microsoft project, TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript.


He received the 2001 Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award for his work on Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C# and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Together with Shon Katzenberger, Scott Wiltamuth, Todd Proebsting, Erik Meijer, Peter Hallam and Peter Sollich, Anders was awarded a Technical Recognition Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement for their work on the C# language in 2007. A video about this is available at Microsoft Channel 9.[5]

Published work[edit]


  1. ^ a b c d e f "Anders Hejlsberg: Microsoft Technical Fellow". Microsoft. Archived from the original on 27 April 2009. Retrieved 2003-04-06. 
  2. ^
  3. ^ Hejlsberg states in this video that he never graduated
  4. ^
  5. ^ "Outstanding Technical Achievement: C# Team" (video). Microsoft Developer Network: Channel 9. Microsoft. 6 April 2007. Archived from the original on 26 April 2007. Retrieved 6 April 2007. 

External links[edit]