@26
I'd stop worrying about this. Pascal is older than GUIs in a 100% literal sense.  It's older than DOS.  The only reason you *might* have a problem is if your school mandates a specific graphical-only distribution that's inaccessible, but it is basically impossible for any programming language that's used in a professional capacity to not have a command line compiler, and also for it not to offer the ability to write a console app.

There are only two offenders I can think of offhand that break this rule, and only one that breaks it completely.  The first is Microsoft-specific technologies like C#, where you still get a command line compiler anyway, but you need their IDE due to lack of documentation and stuff (but you can do basic stuff anyway, and I have gone much further, it's just unpleasant without the IDE).  The one that completely doesn't work is stuff for electronics design: Verilog and VHDL.  This is because part of the process involves doing circuit layout graphically because computers can't do all of that for you, just most of it, but since you can't do anything with those without an oscilloscope and a bunch of other inaccessible hardware, it's not like that's your biggest issue.

There is a reason a lot of us go into programming, and quite bluntly, it's that it's very very hard to fuck up accessibility so badly you can't get around it somehow.  You might be inefficient, you might have to work out undocumented utilities, you might have to reverse engineer a proprietary IDE or go install some custom GCC patch for xyz microcontroller from big enterprise corp that's only used in smart air vents on skyscrapers over 50 stories.  But you usually can.

Oh my god, Pascal! We had to use this too in school. So, they even do this in Germany. And yes, we had to use Lazarus as our IDE and yes, it's crap with accessibility.

@28 I see where you're coming from, but I don't agree completely. I see big advantages of using a language that is widely used today, even in a beginners class, but I see not one single advantage for using an old language that is barely used anymore. What is wrong in not only learning the basics of variables and loops, but also at the same time learning a language you can use later?

@28  I meant that these basic building blocks are the same in Pascal as they are in basically all the top languages with just some differences in syntax. So he can use this class to learn them and transfering that knowledge to python, Java, C# with basically no issues.

I am not saying there is a advantage to teaching with Pascal instead of let's say python. I just mean that teaching an intro class using Pascal is not a huge disadvantage.

OK. So I spent a little time on this, possibly hoping to create a small test project to share around with my friends. I got acustom to the sintax which was pretty much a fusion of BGT and Python sintax. My plan was to get up early in the morning when only my mum is awake. When the house is quiet, and start working on the projec. Tonight however, I managed to get a hold of some pascal LPR code, but let's just say the way I thought coding pascal programmes was like waaaaaaaaay off. Like wanting to go to an eastern Canadian city from New York and some how ending up in Sydney in Austrailia off. It could just be that Lazarus is just a pretty funny know it all that's keen on the idea of keeping all Lazarus projects homogenius, or its just pascal code in general. So, I will now have to take that early morning slot to relearn how to code in Pascal. Needless to say this is going to at least take up 4 hours out of my time. And we're already in July! Soon school will reopen and I won't have much time to screw around!

Learning Pascal I must say it was rather easy to grasp. Reminding me of BGT in some areas, python in aanother and even Purebasic to an extent. It was really interesting, and a bit different from say BGT or those others that I've mentioned, dispite the simularities. Now, hopefully from this I can branch out to something else more advanced like C++ or something else. Let's see where this goes.

I also managed to get a little grasp of the Lazarus IDE. Writing code in it is pretty straight forward, and building scripts is also stragith forward.

C++ took me 2 years and a failed project to be a minimum level of competent.  It took me an additional 1-2 years beyond that not to need docs frequently.  C++ documentation looks like this. If you can read the partial ordering heading on that page without flinching you're a better programmer than me.  Not me then.  Me now.  And there's a bunch more pages like it behind that I could link.  Also note--this isn't the official specification, this is a site that explains the official specification in terms that us mere mortals might have a chance of understanding.

it's very powerful.  I could make an audiogame with it.  But getting to the point where you can just say "yeah I know, how about I make an audiogame in C++" is the closest thing programmers have to a religious journey or something.  Don't.  Your time is much more valuable unless you're specifically contemplating projects that C++ will help you with, or have a lot of experience as a programmer.

Just being picky here, but C and C++ are different. Please keep this in mind.

For what it's worth, a universities goal isn't necessarily to make you job ready - it's to teach you the concepts that will make you job ready in the future. Personally, as a professional software engineer myself - I'd have confidence that if you knew Pascal, and could program well in it, that you would be able to learn C, or Python. If you'd used some of the object stuff in there, I'd suspect you could handle C++ or Java with further training too.

Don't get too hung up on the language. If you work in software, you will end up cycling through languages. In the last 5 years, I've professionally worked in C, C++, C#, VB.net, Javascript, Typescript, Python, Powershell, and BASH - and about 4 flavours of SQL. Pascal is a good language to get the concepts right, but true: you likely won't use it in a professional context. Whenever I think I'm getting used to a language or tool, I find myself needing to work in another. Unless you spend your life embedded programming, you'll probably end up being a little bit the same.