So to get a better ranking we can try to chance their policy and/or adept to it.....
For instance, they split the pascal community up into 2 languages:
- Delphi/Object Pascal
- Pascal
This splitting up results in the fact that they both end up with a lower ranking!!!
The Object Pascal and Pascal wikipedia does show many of the dialects (including Free Pascal/Lazarus), so I'm not sure (sarcasm) how the TIOBE staff was blind to this, and decided the dialects were all separate languages (which makes no sense whatsoever).
I have e-mailed TIOBE too. What I got out of it was a lot of ignorance from them about what a programming language is and contradictions. It appears that
their index is aligned to their business interests and bias within their company. I got the impression that they will definitely put their thumb on the scale, regardless of what any data says, because TIOBE is also
selling products that support specific programming languages. If you look through what they sell, it becomes more obvious. Unfortunately, the average person doing Google searches about language popularity has no idea that the TIOBE index is highly questionable and takes it as the gospel, so it's shaping and corrupting public opinion (which aligns with their products).
However, I do agree that Free Pascal/Lazarus should make it clear that it
falls under the umbrella of Object Pascal and link to that Wiki page as well.
At university I did not learn Pascal, but was previous knowledge. At university is teached C and Java, JavaScript in the last course I take this year.
So Pascal is not even being teached, there are paid courses that are 'learn free pascal'? Not books, but modern interactive courses with online tools.
This is flawed thinking, that we have to be careful about. That is, what affects us personally or is going on in our area/country is therefore the reality for everyone and everywhere. We shouldn't do that.
Many countries do more actively teach Pascal/Object Pascal and use Delphi. Say what we will about how Embarcadero has managed the Delphi product, but they do push the Academic Edition of RAD Studio very hard. There is also no limit of installations on the same network. This year, Turkey's minister of education
bought 1 million Delphi licenses for their students. By contrast, I'm not quite sure why the Free Pascal and Lazarus foundation is not making a push or some type of outreach towards being an alternative or being used in schools. Especially in very poor communities and countries.
Various countries around the world are still teaching Pascal/Object Pascal. Russia has PascalABC (free open-source), which has been taught in their school system for over 18 years. Check YouTube, and you will see many Russian videos on it (sadly they are nearly all in the Russian language only). If they every got their act together about producing English manuals and English videos, they might be more popular. South African schools purposely removed Java and use Delphi. Pascal/Object Pascal or Delphi has a long history in the school systems of many countries such as: Brazil, Bosnia, Romania, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Italy, Jamaica, Libya, Moldova, Serbia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Czech republic and Vietnam.
The issue is that in the USA, we have major global corporations backing their pet languages. Oracle with Java, Microsoft with C#, Apple with Objective-C/Swift, etc... So the market is crowded. These huge companies will stoop to some very low tactics, like claiming every language that is not theirs is "dead" or should not be learned. This insane thinking seems to be pushed heavily into the minds of too many of their language users and advocates.
What might also be effective for Free Pascal/Lazarus is
a new YouTube series from Lazarus experts about this flavor of Object Pascal. Delphi based videos, by contrast, are everywhere on YouTube. Even PascalABC has more videos out than Free Pascal/Lazarus, despite being lesser known. The Free Pascal/Lazarus specific video series that I know of are SchoolFreeware and Devstructor, which are both good, but getting a bit old.
Links to a Free Pascal/Lazarus YouTube series can be pushed by the website and forum members on their personal websites and social media. The SchoolFreeware and Devstructor series are nice, but from a branding perspective and website promotion, probably Free Pascal/Lazarus having their own video series (at least an introductory to intermediate one) would be more effective. And of course the video series should make it clear that it's teaching Object Pascal and the IDE is Lazarus, to stop that bit of confusion.
Something else that I noticed is that existing free PDFs teaching Free Pascal/Lazarus appear to not be getting any push from this website or the Wikipedia. Correct me if I'm wrong about that. The Lazarus Handbook is excellent, very extensive, and thorough. But, also pushing "getting your feet wet" type PDFs could help too with general public awareness.
http://www.copperwood.com/pub/FreePascalFromSquareOne.pdf(Free Pascal From Square One)
http://code.sd/startprog/StartProgUsingPascal.pdf(Start Programming Using Object Pascal)
https://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal_introduction.pdf(Modern Object Pascal Introduction for Programmers)