[TOPIC split from Beginning Pascal]Contemporary with what? >:-)
Of course I can't be speak for the OP, but my impression from various forums and the Internet is there is a odd and big disconnect between Pascal, Object Pascal, and Delphi in the minds of casuals. There is also a lot of negative propaganda from C/C++/C# circles against Pascal specifically. To include referring to old papers from Brian Kernighan, which
do not reflect modern dialects of Pascal/Object Pascal, but used to bash Pascal anyway. There is also no mention of Pascal/Object Pascal's
various advantages over C, C++, and C#.
Many casuals would have no idea that Delphi is just a product name, and the programming language is Object Pascal. Nor would many realize that Pascal became Object Pascal. This fragmented or limited awareness, can lead many thinking that Pascal is some old dead language, whose last incarnation was Turbo Pascal, or something like that.
I'm quite shocked to see people, some self-proclaimed experienced programmers included, who act like they can't do proper Internet searches (at the very least), and don't know about the evolution of Pascal to Object Pascal and then the various IDEs and compilers out there (which there are many). A quick look at the wikipedia for Pascal (programming language) and Object Pascal should give people a clue (as the language has been evolving), but it seems a lot of people glance over that.
Oddly, YouTube (Google), appears to be doing something strange when it comes to searching for Pascal (programming language). They might be
putting their foot on the scale (algorithm) for corporate reasons or something is going on that doesn't make sense and doesn't happen in searches for other programming languages. You will get a lot of these slick ignorant videos of "dying languages" or "don't learn these languages" in the results, thus giving a negative impression of Pascal. In addition, search for Pascal/Object Pascal/Delphi, and get lots of videos for C#, C++, or Java in your search or suggestions. Which is a bit disturbing, considering the list of Pascal/Object Pascal/Delphi videos are quite considerable to not do that. Also, according to the controversial TIOBE index, Object Pascal/Delphi is ranked #12 (as of April 2021). That is, Object Pascal/Delphi is
ranked above Go, Kotlin, or Dart (Swift, Ruby, Julia, MATLAB, and other notables). But, if the person doesn't specifically direct their YouTube search for Object Pascal or know that Delphi's programming language is Object Pascal, then they can be confused or unaware as to what is going on with the language in modern times.
Hopefully, the list of books and links we gave, should be quite helpful and informative about where contemporary Pascal/Object Pascal is at.