Why isn't Lazarus / Free Pascal more popular?

[Xtra999]

Hi,
Maybe I'm not the first one who is wondering about why Lazarus isn't more popular amongst developers? I recently finished my first small project with it (< 1000 LOC) and I'm really satisfied with this Language and IDE. It's a pure CLI program, but coming from other languages I can't really see any major disadvantages. Lazarus / FPC

- compiles as fast as Go
- is as easy to learn as Python
- compiled executables are roughly as fast as C# native builds
- is at least as comfortable as Python + Qt / Qt builder when it comes to GUI programming
- doesn't require any runtime libs

Despite all of those facts Free Pascal seems to be a dying language. Most of the devs seem to use it for many years, working on legacy software, which makes me think that the majority of devs is a bit older.

[marcov]

Maybe I'm not the first one who is wondering about why Lazarus isn't more popular amongst developers?

Opinions vary, but mine is that there is no big US corporation pushing it.

Despite all of those facts Free Pascal seems to be a dying language. Most of the devs seem to use it for many years, working on legacy software, which makes me think that the majority of devs is a bit older.

Language popularity is very overrated. Terms like "legacy software" are only uttered to promote something new and fancy, it is more about the alternative wanting to advertise itself as "new and shiny".

Anyway, as I see it you have two choices. Go with the flow, and let company/management choose your tools, which means  you will never be be blamed for that choice, OR take initiative and choose your own tools

Either way is valid and depends on what you will do, but in bigger companies the going with the flow is the safer option. In smaller companies, management control over the development process is less pronounced and you can choose what is beneficial.

[robert rozee]

[...] why Lazarus isn't more popular amongst developers? [...]

the answer is much the same that for "why Delphi isn't more popular amongst developers?". some insights may be gleaned from here:
https://dev.to/viktoriabors/is-delphi-a-good-career-choice-for-junior-developers-epc

1. lack of accessible support resources for programmers,
2. preference for web and mobile applications,
3. today's job market favouring other languages that are perceived as 'more modern'.

an interesting idea would be adding a 'web browser' target for Lazarus, if done right this may open up new opportunities for the application of Lazarus.


cheers,
rob   :-)

[Thaddy]

Dunno. It is superb.

[CM630]

We know why Lazarus is not more popular, but we do not know how to fix that.

[Lenny33]

First of all, Pascal was never taken seriously. It's always been considered a language for learning to program.
This changed for a while due to the popularity of Turbo-Pascal & Delphi from the late 80s till early 2000s.
But in fact, it was no longer Pascal, but Object-Pascal.
And for that period of time it was the best programming model for GUI programs.
But obviously due to greed and shortsightedness of Borland company all influence of this environment and language was lost.

Secondly, ~20 years ago even Pascal came to be considered too complicated to be taught in schools.
Everywhere try to simplify learning because many schoolchildren are not good at logic and mathematical models and structures.
That's why script languages without strict typing and with the most visual structure are more suitable for learning.
And that's why Pascal has been almost universally replaced in schools by Python over the last 20 years.
But if children then go to university to study programming, they are taught C/C++/Java and some other languages, but not Pascal.
And as a consequence, none of the young people know Pascal-like syntax anymore and it is extremely difficult to find specialists to develop and support the project

Third, Delphi and Lazarus now have a very specific niche. It is primarily so-called classic desktop applications, most of which are designed to work with databases.
At the same time, these applications most often can boast neither a modern vector interface (such as QML), nor the ability to do something for WEB-interfaces (such as ASP.NET or more modern Blazor), nor outstanding speed of execution (as programs in C++).
Modern Delphi has FMX interfaces, which are not bad for mobile applications, but their use is very specific.
But Lazarus has almost only a classic desktop, everything else is extremely inconvenient and looks unprofessional.

Despite all this Lazarus as a cross-platform free project has good prospects.
First of all, it allows you to quick write much safer native GUI or service programs for different platforms than,
for example, native and powerful, but holey at every step C++.
Besides, Object-Pascal is much more convenient for high-level programming than C++.
The only thing in which Delphi and Lazarus compilers are seriously inferior to C++ is the speed of the final code.
Test applications compiled in VC++ run up 2 times faster than the same algorithms in Delphi or Lazarus.
For example, because of this, we had to write all signal processing as C++ libraries in our analyzing signals application.
And it was very inconvenient in both debugging and support. But it is possible that this will soon change for the better with the move to LLVM.

[silvercoder70]

It’s interesting how much Pascal (Free Pascal & Lazarus, Delphi) — still has going for it (see note 1). However, most people have no idea. Why?

A big part of it is image. At least that is my view. Pascal started life in the 1970s as a teaching language, and that label has stuck around. A lot of developers, especially younger ones, just associate it with dusty textbooks or Turbo Pascal on DOS. They don’t realize how far Object Pascal has come — especially with Free Pascal and Delphi. It’s not some ancient toy language anymore. How many books have been released in the last 5 years compared to C++ or Rust?

But unlike newer languages like Rust, Go, or Python, Pascal doesn’t have the same buzz. Those languages have larger communities, more content, and constant hype! (These are all relative!) These are also backed by big companies (see note 2). Pascal? There is a community  for Free Pascal and Lazarus users who are active and passionate — but it’s not loud (read not "evangelical" like some). There are not as many YouTubers, bloggers, or Twitter threads showing off cool Pascal projects. So it kind of flies under the radar. Part of the reason I started my channel.

I’ve been using Delphi since 1995, and before that, Turbo Pascal (plus a bit of C). So I’ve seen the "evolution" or whatever you want to call it. Delphi itself could’ve been way more dominant if different choices had been made, but I’m not getting into that. What matters is that the language is still here. Free Pascal and Lazarus has come a long way... I was asked in the first few videos I did to try out Fpc and I'm converted.

Ian Barker (Embacerdero) made a video recently showing there still businesses using Delphi to build real products that make real money. A lot of useful things get built in Pascal — they just don’t make Hacker News.

One of the other issues is resources. Either there aren’t as many, or they’re just harder to find. A lot of tutorials and code samples are old, and modern guides can be a bit scattered. That makes Pascal seem outdated, even when it isn’t. Compare that to Python or JavaScript, where every question you could ever ask has a dozen Stack Overflow answers and a full YouTube series.

If people tried Free Pascal, they would see it’s not outdated and actually has some useful functions/ideas.


Notes

1. Native code, cross-platform, fast compiles, web, embedded etc.
2. see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskProgramming/comments/x32pmg/which_programming_languages_are_big_companies/

[Thaddy]

First of all, Pascal was never taken seriously. It's always been considered a language for learning to program.

That's not true, so I can safely ignore the rest of your post. Pascal is a direct decendant of Algol on which Wirth worked before. Pascal is not BASIC.
BASIC was designed as a teaching language.You mixed them up.
(See wikipedia)
Btw, while still in use Algol, is even less popular than Pascal.
The marks of the language makes it a good teaching language, but it was never designed for the purpose. It was designed to be well structured.

[lainz]

TIOBE index of April 2025 position Delphi and Object Pascal at position 9. So it's used a lot like 2.5%.

[anse]

First of all, Pascal was never taken seriously. It's always been considered a language for learning to program.

Agree with that. I learned the very first programming lines myself in 1991 using Turbo Pascal from a math teacher with old-school clothes and weird hair.

I can just speculate the popular/non-popular discussions are about the much noise we nowadays have in programming jobs. I tend to think Pascal's popularity is quite stable over such a long time, while other languages come and go and vanish for all times in the meantime.

[Lenny33]

That's not true, so I can safely ignore the rest of your post. Pascal is a direct decendant of Algol on which Wirth worked before. Pascal is not BASIC

It is bad that you are not able to perceive the whole text but judge only by the first phrase.
One of the goals of creating the Pascal language by Niklaus Wirth was to teach students structural programming.
In fact, nobody used pure Pascal in commerce in those days (maybe with a few exceptions I don't know). It was more of an academic toy.
That didn't change until 1983 with the introduction of Turbo-Pascal. And things changed even more with the introduction of Object Pascal dialect in 1985 or 1986.
Nowadays, only modern dialects of Object Pascal are still used in real projects. Pure Pascal is already history. It is almost never even taught anywhere.

[440bx]

In fact, nobody used pure Pascal in commerce in those days (maybe with a few exceptions I don't know).

That's the problem.  Pascal was used in real development before the PC Turbo versions appeared and made it popular but, before those appeared, Pascal was not a commonly known language which causes people to emit statements like the one above.

Big companies "bothered" to develop Pascal compilers and, it wasn't just for it to be taught in schools. Hard core stuff was written in Pascal.

There are plenty of reasons why Free Pascal isn't more popular and, they are not going to change.  As far as Lazarus goes, if it weren't for Lazarus, it's quite likely that FPC would have already gone the way of GPC.  Lazarus is quite likely, single handedly, keeping FPC alive (the same way that without the Delphi IDE, it's quite likely that Borland's/Idera's/whoever's object Pascal compiler would be in the binary grave along with Lisa Pascal.)

Today, development of Pascal for "big iron" is basically non-existent and, for PCs, it is pretty much limited to a few "niche" compilers (most of them, obscure) which get a very limited investment of time and resources (likely due to their relatively small user base.)

Essentially, for quite some time now, the Pascal market isn't about Pascal but, about selling a _framework_ which happens to be written in Pascal.  Idera isn't developing the Pascal language (granted, it adds one little feature every now and then), it's actively developing frameworks. .net is likely to have hurt Pascal more than any programming language.

Sadly, it is quite unlikely to get better.

[Joanna from IRC]

Free pascal much like other things of great value is ignored by the majority of average people.

[JD]

Maybe I'm not the first one who is wondering about why Lazarus isn't more popular amongst developers?

In my opinion, the biggest drivers of programming language popularity are
a) corporate sponsorship
b) schools and universities

And they feed off each other. It seldom has to do with what the language can do. And as I was once told, customers don't care what language you use to solve a problem as long as it works! I use Lazarus/FPC when I have to develop desktop applications and headless server services/daemons. It produces small, fast executables that work wonders on legacy machines. On web/mobile applications, I use something else that can give the modern look and feel of such applications.

Lazarus/FPC will remain a niche language  but will be loved and appreciated by the dedicated few that use it. COBOL (for obvious reasons) and even Visual Foxpro are still in the TIOBE index! 

Cheers,

JD

[440bx]

On web/mobile applications, I use something else that can give the modern look and feel of such applications.

Just curiosity... if you don't mind sharing, what do you use to develop web/mobile apps ?

Thanks.