I had my share of porting C# GUI programs to Object Pascal (Lazarus/Delphi). I think the best part of FreePascal are the "outputs". I will always choose native

I had my share of porting C# GUI programs to Object Pascal (Lazarus/Delphi). I think the best part of FreePascal are the "outputs". I will always choose native GUI easily multi-platform programs over framework-dependent bytecode Windows-biased programs. It's also pleasant that you don't have to spend hours figuring out how to compile popular GUI framework X for C/C++ while Lazarus/Delphi just works out of the box. For the latter, the de facto GUI framework feels more in "harmony" with the language/compiler toolchain. However, as a language, Pascal is a bit of a pain. The parts that frustrate me the most, are the necessity of editing code across separate locations when introducing a new variable/function and the lack of smaller scopes beyond function scope. Brian W. Kernighan's "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language" (1981) lists some of these frustrating parts, although there are many improvements since then. I think more recent pascal compilers now support declarations elsewhere aside the interface section or beginning of a function. But more recent also means less support for older systems, which is part of what I like about Pascal. And if my program doesn't need a GUI, I feel that C/C++ is far more productive for multi-platform-compilable native programs.