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"Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language" was written in 1981 and the criticisms are out of date. Pascal has moved on since then. Try FreePascal (with Lazarus) or try Delphi.

So... just like most people's criticisms of C++ then?

C++ has moved since the 1990s, too.

You're welcome to relegate Pascal to the equivalent bin as COBOL, when there is another language that offers what Free Pascal and its corresponding Lazarus IDE offer: cross-platform RAD resulting in lightning fast native executables on more platforms than any other development solution that I know of - all of it at no cost.

especially Pascal

"Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language" was written in 1981 and the criticisms are out of date. Pascal has moved on since then. Try FreePascal (with Lazarus) or try Delphi.

QB64 is an excellent product, and I've used it in the past to port old GW-BASIC code.
But it is not distributed by Microsoft with every computer. Which I think is a valuable piece that gets people used to the idea of programing their own computer.

I also recommend Lazarus IDE if you want to to flex your Delphi/TurboPascal muscles. I think Pascal is a bit easier than C to pick up the basics, and that particular IDE is easier than most of the free ones for C. Sure Visual Studio Express is more powerful and free, but that level of complexity is not really what I was aiming at and kinda why we have fewer people picking up programming as a hobby.

Lazarus gets you the Object Pascal derived syntax from Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and provides an IDE available on multiple platforms. I've had zero problems installing it on several systems, mostly for quick and dirty projects where I didn't necessarily want to use C.

So you are saying that the years since BWK wrote that article have given us even more reasons to dislike Pascal, such as the fact that the only versions that are useful are either dead for 20+ years (Turbo Pascal) or need vendor-proprietary extensions (Delphi)?

No. You have fallen prey to the common hype.

There is, the GCC of Pascal world, that is Free Pascal https://www.freepascal.org/ : an Open Source version with a modern syntax and concepts. The complaints on the article seem someone complaining about Linux arguing that you have to compile the Kernel to add mouse support.

Also, Lazarus https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ is a modern Open Source IDE that picked where Delphi stop and you can develop and compile applications for Windows, Linux and OSX.

FPC - GPL, a very complete environment (Lazarus offers a nicer IDE)
P5 Pascal - public domain (fork of one of the original Pascal systems)
GNU Pascal
IP Pascal
etc

All of which are more powerful than VisualBasic and not really any more difficult to use. (my opinion)

Native apps from "garage" developers: zero users on Wii U. Web apps from "garage" developers: greater than zero users on Wii U.

You're not genuinely trying to argue that the Wii U is a significant application platform, are you? It's a games platform for children, and the least successful console of the current generation by a mile. You'd be crazy to target it for applications, native or otherwise.

Even HTML5 game support is weak on the Wii. No support for sound? Does it even have WebGL support? Nope, guess not. And look at this weird non-standard stuff. Effortless support it ain't.

You haven't provided evidence for your claim that web development with all its current limitations, with all the vagaries of differences between browsers is more efficient or productive than native cross platform application development. Some me some real, measurable outcomes instead of making vague assertions.

First, there's the overhead of obtaining hardware on which to test the build for each platform. You essentially have to buy a Mac, buy a copy of Parallels, and buy a retail copy of Windows.

Welcome to professional development. And as you said yourself it's the same deal for web development. What, you got your Wii U for free in a box of cereal or something?

That's fine once your company is big enough to afford "the right development environment".

Many cross platform languages, libraries, and development environments are free. You can use GCC or Rust or Python or Free Pascal and their associated libraries, or use none of them and use something else. You want to do GUI applications? Look, here's an option. Here's another. Use what you want, I don't care.

There are more options available now than ever. Small companies can easily find the right development environment for them for native application development for as much or as little money as they want to spend.

What's the status of Lazarus ? Still under active development ?

Absolutely: http://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Circa 1986 or so, you wouldn't have thought "kind of a dead language, nobody uses it for anything anymore"

I don't think that circa 2015. You should check out Free Pascal, Lazarus, and Delphi. After using a lot of languages, tools, libraries and IDEs, I still haven't seen anything do rapid application development better than Delphi.

A fully compatible version of Delphi so Christian can write Total Commander for Linux to run natively.

Not quite, but maybe close enough?

Use Object Pascal. It's a better language to work with than C++. Free Pascal with Lazarus is a good, open source option. Alternatively there's Delphi which also has good cross platform support (Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, but not Linux yet and maybe Windows 10 Mobile soon).

Object Pascal is quite a nice language. The open source Free Pascal compiler targets many platforms and Lazarus gives you an IDE and frameworks for building GUI applications with Free Pascal. Delphi only runs on Windows, but can cross compile to OS X, iOS and Android for making multiplatform applications. See the changes since Delphi 7 for the current state of Delphi and the Delphi roadmap. The Delphi and Pascal subreddits are also pretty good resources.