A simple google search will show all the "big-name" projects that were written in Pascal in the PAST. We all know how dominant Borland Delphi was in the market in its day. I'm not trying to discuss the past though. I'm trying to discuss, learn, and possibly, as a community, generate useful ideas to make this community bigger.
I fully agree with the points Martin present:
So how to spread the word? => Write articles for computer magazines (online and offline)
Approach the publishers, and see what they would publish (if you wrote it).
Or find someone skilled in writing such articles.
Now if I go back to one point I tried to make earlier, who else would have the knowledge required to do such things other than the experienced users or even contributors to the projects?
For example, a youtube search for "delphi tutorial" shows some "high quality" and fairly recent videos with good views count.
If we do the same for "lazarus tutorial", it isn't nearly the same, where the top results are some 10 years old or so.
Same goes for "object pascal tutorial".
One annoying thing you will inevitably see when searching for "delphi/pascal/object pascal" is the "it's dying" videos/articles with lots of views/engagements. I think a direct consequence for this also inevitably affects Lazarus due to its "attachment" to Delphi. Can this be fixed or changed? If so how?
This reminds me of the one time I was contacted by a company to work on a desktop application and they already had written some C# code for it. I discussed it with the manager and convinced him that writing it with Lazarus/FPC is the best option for their project. He had never heard of Lazarus but had an idea about Delphi and his first words were "It's a dead language". We spent a few hours going on about this and I made direct comparisons with C# and he felt more positive about it and gave green light. It was a "big" medical project. "big" in terms of scope and investment.
What I concluded from that experience is that seem to follow the "loud voice" even if they have no idea about what's being said.
I try to spread the word about Lazarus/FPC around my circle but I see that more must be done and thus I've now decided that I will try to do more like writing articles, making videos, tutorials etc. Although I haven't done anything like this but I will do what I can.
What I dislike about discussing Pascal is that people will always find a way to talk about its better past. Reminds me of those people who are proud of their countries because of what it had achieved thousands of years ago. Yes that's great and all but we are in the present and we should focus on that.