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Because it’s 2022 not 1982?

There hasn’t been a new Pascal standard in 34 years.



Not sure about the current state of ISO Pascal, at least there's no ISO D or Rust, either. D and Rust are defined by the official implementations.

On the other side, Delphi is still being enhanced and FPC tries to be compatible with it, so there are not stuck in 1982.


I do C#, Go, Python, Node, Ruby, etc., but Free Pascal with Lazarus is my #1 choice for any cross-platform desktop app that needs a decent GUI without using Electron.

It's free, fast (enough), and exceptionally easy. If you need a supported system then even Delphi is back to being (not totally un)reasonably priced once you consider that they only charge when you begin earning from it. Their threshold is very low, but by the time you reach it you've tested your idea and got sales.

As for Pascal standards, I'm not entirely sure why there would need to be a recent one. Standards bodies have their place, but their activity is pretty much never something I ever give a thought to when deciding on software tooling.


I think Pascal implementations are practically dominated by Delphi and FPC these days (FPC has Delphi compatibility mode).

On the other side, there are more players in C/C++ club: GCC, Clang, MSVC, Pelles C, LCC Win32, AMD C++, Intel C++, etc. Having a standard is certainly useful.


Standards can be overrated, sure, but some things like Unicode support really need to be done rihht




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