One small confession before we begin.
The first programming language I ever used was not Pascal. It was the built-in BASIC on the Atari 800XL home computer. At the time, in Egypt, that was what was available to many of us—mostly home computers imported from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, including the famous SAKHR Arabic computers.
Surprisingly, I wasn't introduced to Pascal until I was 39 years old.
Perhaps it was my own ignorance, or perhaps my attention had been captured by newer systems programming languages like Rust, Zig, and Odin. Whatever the reason, I now feel I discovered Pascal far later than I should have.
The more I write in Pascal, the more I appreciate its elegance. Its syntax is remarkably clean, easy to read, and easy to learn. In many ways, it almost reads like plain English—you feel as though you're simply having a conversation with the computer. That clarity is one of the reasons Pascal has remained a beloved teaching language for decades.
After spending some time reading about the language and its history, I found that the modern Pascal ecosystem can be summarized as follows:
1. Free Pascal Compiler (FPC)
This is the compiler I currently use. It is free, open source, and actively maintained. FPC supports Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD, ARM, and many other platforms, making it one of the most versatile Pascal compilers available today.
2. Lazarus
Lazarus is the most popular free IDE for Free Pascal.
Think of it as the Pascal equivalent of Visual Studio for C# or Code::Blocks for C (although I'm not sure how many people still use Code::Blocks in 2026!). It provides a modern editor, debugger, project manager, visual form designer, and everything you need to build Pascal applications.
3. Delphi (Object Pascal)
Delphi is the commercial branch of Pascal and the direct successor to the legendary Turbo Pascal. It includes both an IDE and a compiler and is still widely used for developing professional desktop and business applications.
4. Turbo Pascal
The classic Borland compiler that introduced an entire generation to programming.
If you programmed during the DOS era, chances are you've seen its iconic blue IDE. It was famous for its incredibly fast compiler and became one of the most influential development environments of the 1980s and 1990s.
Pascal
│
┌──────────────┴──────────────┐
│ │
Classic Pascal Object Pascal
│ │
│ Delphi
│ │
│ ├── VCL
│ └── FireMonkey
│
└─────────────┐
│
Free Pascal (FPC)
│
┌───────────┴───────────┐
│ │
Lazarus IDE Castle Game Engine
If you've ever been curious about Pascal, I've put together a short introductory video covering its history, the different Pascal ecosystems, and how to get started with Free Pascal and Lazarus.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and watch the video.
I'd also love to hear about your own experience. Did you learn Pascal at school or university? Was it your first programming language, or did you discover it later in your career? Share your memories in the comments!
Top comments (9)
One of my weirdest takes is that people should not learn to code with C, but with pascal. It's not the greatest language to be productive in 2026, but it has some guard rails that enforce more purposeful structure rather than putting code wherever your cursor is whenever you decide you need it.
I share the same opinion
I like Miranda 🥰
Never touched Miranda before :)
It is less about touchy-touchy, more about talkie-talkie :)
Miranda is the predecessor Haskell.
Haskell has gf called Agda.
Fun langs.
If you are into imperative, you should take a look at Spark (in the context of Ada).
It is quite a jolly little thing.
That's exactly what I meant. I've never touched Miranda—I mean, I've never written any code in Miranda. 😄
I know about Ada, though. I once watched Tsoding code in it like an absolute boss, but I've never programmed in Ada myself either.
I specifically meant Spark.
We developers rarely talk about the fact, that after almost 100 years, we run untested, and unproven code 99% of the time.
Spark isn't solving the problem (aka it is not a holy grail), but at least it tries to deal with this problem.
Aka it is not about development, but about static and dynamic analysis.
I actually like Agda. it is quite neat-o.
One can write code, but also the proof.
I don1t mean unit test. I mean literal actual proof :)
Problem with Agda is that...
it is so out-of-touch from the reality that an average developer never did a single proof even in school on paper, therefore it is like expecting a happy baby seal to pilot a AH-1Z and provide close air support to ground units.
Memories .. Basic was my actual first on a Tandy TRS-80 in grades 7 and 8. In my high school years, we used Pascal on an Apple 2 with one of those hi-tech, at the time, amber monochrome monitors and 64KB of RAM.
And yes, I'm old and was a COBOL developer! No laughs please!!!
Awesome ! No laughs No laughs :)