# Turbo Go, or 90s nostalgia

> Source: <https://k33g.org/p/20260920-nostalgia>
> Published: 2026-09-20 00:00:00+00:00

My first real IDE was Borland's [Turbo Pascal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal) editor (or maybe [QBasic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic) 🤓), and I have to admit I missed it a lot, especially when I'm in a terminal. The closest thing to it is the [Midnight Commander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander) text editor, but it's not development oriented.

For the (much) younger ones among you who probably never got to know [Turbo Pascal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal) (or Turbo C and Turbo C++), it looked like this:

So, like I was saying, I missed it: a simple but powerful editor, where I don't need to type `!wq` to get out ... troll ... And what if AI gave me a hand on this one? I've been polishing development skills, quality skills, ... for a few months now, so it was a good test subject: I wanted to build a **Turbo Go** 🚀. And the test was conclusive 🎉! So today let me introduce my little **Turbo Go**, an old-school IDE/editor with modern features.

Now, it's not "battle tested" yet, but it's already usable. I keep working on it and I still need to "polish" the docs, which for the moment are generated automatically. I've been able to test **Turbo Go** on macOS and Linux (the Windows binary exists, but I need to find a bit of time).

## [Installing Turbo Go](#installing-turbo-go)

You can find the binaries of the latest release (`v1.0.3` ) over here: [https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-go/releases/v1.0.3](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-go/releases/v1.0.3).

I work on macOS, and here's how I do it:

```
# download the binary release in https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-golo/releases
VERSION=1.0.3
curl -fsSLO "https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-golo/releases/download/v${VERSION}/turbo-golo-${VERSION}-darwin-arm64"
chmod +x ./turbo-golo-${VERSION}-darwin-arm64
xattr -cr ./turbo-golo-${VERSION}-darwin-arm64
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/turbo-golo
sudo cp ./turbo-golo-${VERSION}-darwin-arm64 /usr/local/bin/turbo-golo
```

And now I can launch **Turbo Go** from anywhere with the `turbo-go` command.

For the other operating systems, I'll let you figure it out (but I'll update the `README.md` once I'm done with my tests, or I'll write some "quick starts").

## [Launching Turbo Go - first contact](#launching-turbo-go-first-contact)

So, **Turbo Go** is configurable with `.toml` files, but for this post, I've prepared a ready-made configuration (over here: [turbo-editors/configs](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/configs)) that you can install like this:

```
cd demo # or any other directory
turbo-go -load-config https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/configs/tree/main/golang-init
```

Output:

```
Copied .turbo-go from https://git.rickub.com/turbo-editors/configs.git (main):
  settings.toml
  snippets.toml
  tools.toml
```

So now you have this in your `./demo` directory:

```
.
└── .turbo-go
    ├── settings.toml
    ├── snippets.toml
    └── tools.toml
```

And you can launch `turbo-go`:

## [Using Turbo Go - Quick Tour](#using-turbo-go-quick-tour)

Start by saving the file as `main.go`:

Then use the **snippets** menu and select `main`:

There you go, you have a first program to get started:

With a bit of completion as a bonus:

Then run a `go mod init`:

And we can finally run the program:

Now, we could have done the same thing faster from a terminal, and that works out nicely, because we have a terminal in Turbo Go! 📺 :

You can also get the list of your project's files:

Then, for a bit more clarity, tidy up your windows:

I also added LSP support (it can be improved, but it's a start):

That's it for this quick tour of **Turbo Go**.

Oh, by the way, you can change the theme:

## [So, do you actually use it?](#so-do-you-actually-use-it)

Well, yes, I use it. The goal was to have a tool to code quickly and comfortably, and also to use my brain a bit more 😉.

At first, it was also for fun, but I'm discovering that this very minimal editing mode is also a good way to discover other languages, and in parallel I'm evolving, at the same time as Turbo Go, other editors for other languages (which are on my todo list):

- [Turbo Rust](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-rust)
- [Turbo Python](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-python)
- [Turbo JS](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-js) (I already know it, but it's handy)
- **[Turbo Golo](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-golo)** (my favorite language 🥰)
- [Turbo Moonbit](https://rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-moonbit) (a very nice functional language for doing WebAssembly)

and probably more to come ...

## [And what's next?](#and-whats-next)

Since I really like playing with local LLMs, I added support for ACP (Agent Client Protocol) so I can use them from the Turbo Editors, but I'll tell you about that later:

Stay tuned 🤗, and if you too ask AI to help you build the tools you're missing, feel free to add a comment, I'm very curious to hear about your creations.

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