Hejlsberg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark,[4] and studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. While at the university in 1980, he began writing programs for the Nascommicrocomputer, 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.[5]
At Borland
In Borland's hands, Turbo Pascal became one of the most commercially successful Pascal compilers.[6] 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 Borland Delphi, which replaced Turbo Pascal.[7]
At Microsoft
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.[8][9]
JavaWorld of 1997 writes how Hejlsberg went to Microsoft: Microsoft offered Anders Hejlsberg a signing bonus of US$500,000 and stock options. Microsoft doubled the bonus to US$1,000,000 after Borland made a counter-offer. Hejlsberg left Borland in October 1996.