I was introduced a very long time ago --- aka Delphi 2. I really like the language but there are mainly 2 problems that stand in the way of using it.

1) The code isn't as "optimized" as it could be.

2) The talent pool is limited --- chicken or egg issue.

It has been this way for a very long time so I don't see it changing.

▲

smartmic 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What do you mean by “not optimized enough“? Binaries created with Free Pascal Compiler are very small, compilation time is super fast and runtime performance was never an issue for the typical system/userland programs. I think in many ways on par or ahead of other mainstream system programming languages.

	▲	pjmlp 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Additionally, it eventually shared the same backend with Borland C++, and nowadays C++ Builder. Also Embarcadero has also adopted LLVM, while still having fast build times.

▲

mhitza 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As a different datapoint Pascal is still taught here in Romania in secondary school just as it was the case 20 years ago.

Bigger problem is that they teach the fundamentals with the abandonware that is turbo pascal instead of using something like the modern Free Pascal Compiler. Which means knowledge of what is possible outside curricula is limited.

Last year I almost was tasked with porting some Pascal codebase to a modern language. Problem was the project had a bus factor of 1, legacy overengineered and would only compile on windows with some proprietary compiler.

Maybe that company would use Claude/Codex or something like that, today, to port the project.