I do not mean to demotivate anyone, and this is an uncomfortable question to ask. But i think it is an important question. What are the long-term prospects of FreePascal and Lazarus?
Compared to what? And for what purpose ? I think in general your case is
too vague and general. Yes, other languages are more likely to survive in one form or another on the extremely large timescale, but the chances that an application written now in those alternate languages will still be usable in 5,10,15 years is not great either. Just look at the current Python2 to Python3 migration that took half a decade (and the problem is not just the rewrite, but actually finding one that will dive into your decade old mess of an app. Even if the actual fix is trivial, finding the spot(s) is the problem)
IOW if a label (like a "curly braces" alike language) doesn't really buy you survival of your particular app, because most apps use more than the most common subset of a language in the most naive way.
Delphi and Lazarus have been declared dying since 2000. But if I changed tack any alternate way in the 2000s to .NET, Java, Python etc, they all had very major changes, and applications won't run outright.
Yet still, my 2000-2005 era D7 and FPC apps still work. If I had believed the doomsayers back then, I would have invested in alternatives that in retrospect had caused me more grief than just keeping my money in my pocket and staying with FPC/lazarus/delphi. The only exception might have been C++ and MFC, but that still isn't portable in that way, and probably never will. Moreover, Microsoft essentially declared it dead initially when .NET(2) came out, and only relented in the 2008-2010 timeframe.
Sure Delphi changed to unicode, but I fixed my core apps for that in 3 weeks( though I must note that in that era I was weary of copy-and-pasting D7 assembler code "just because it is faster", because I experimented with FPC and x86_64 and multi target)
(Object) Pascal isn't a very popular language and there is no effort to promote it at all. As far as i know, all the main devs (of freepascal at least) were in university in the 90's which mean they are now all about in their 40's -50's.
Guido van Rossem is from 1965 and still the Python leader. Should we drop Python ? :-)
What happens when they stop maintaining freepascal and lazarus?
Same that happens if any other language changes tack and invalidate your apps. You adapt.
I guess it might be thinking too far ahead, but still, freepascal and lazarus isn't very popular and there is no effort to promote it. When i look at some of the libraries that are available in FreePascal, i see a lot of unmaintained stuff, which just tells me that the current community isn't big enough for projects to be taken over by someone else or to be forked or something. I am just worried that FreePascal and Lazarus might suffer the same fate one day (still a long time from now, but still).
There simply are no outright guarantees. Microsoft invalidates PC from before 2018 with Windows 11, and Apple is going through its 5th architecture change. Be very careful to not confuse labels that survive (like "Windows" or "C++") with the survival of actual application formats.
So to sum up:
- What are the long-term plans/prospects of FreePascal and Lazarus?
- Why is there no effort to promote FreePascal and Lazarus?
- What is being done to get FreePascal and Lazarus to be more popular?
- continue
- Not much hope on success. Most major languages are introduced or adopted by large IT vendors, and usually quite long ago (most <2000). Some newer boutique languages pop up with newer fields (like e.g. AI and statistics (R)) but very few make it. Trying to make huge inroads by marketing is next to pointless, and the resources can be better invested in the tools themselves. Even many languages hyped for a while go silent after a period.
- Make the tools more mature. If you don't have a stage to promote it, make sure it is simply excellent
I am asking in good faith and i do not mean to demotivate anyone.
You are not the first. If you are in an heavily IT centered industry, Pascal might not be your primary choice. It is then usually better to align with the chosen tools, because if you don't, you constantly have to defend it.
Also keep in mind that it might be more productive to not do everything with one language. Specially if your primary target is some javascript webapp or must be Java/.NET/whatever due to company policies, remember that there is some nice free language that is long term stable to do your small tooling :-)
It happens. I also worked at a .NET shop for a few years, though even then, most programmers there still made little inhouse tooling in Delphi.
Anyway, if you take anything away from this lengthy reply, is that you have to consider everything attached to an application for long term compatibility, and not offset a complete application platform like Lazarus against a label that only signifies some generic concept of a language, but may evolve and morph in incompatible ways, and ditching the libraries that you use)