Thanks for all the replies. I'll just continue to have fun with it. After all, that's the goal of hobby projects.
I'll take what I like from it and incorporate it into my game's scripting system. Last time I wrote an interpreter/compiler, I based the language off of forth. It almost guaranteed no one else would use it, but it was pretty fun. This was back in college, and is a long abandoned project. http://mwsherman.com/oldprj/ax/AX.html I could almost dust-off the VM interpreter code and put it in front of my newer project, but the old code I wrote so long ago is so gross! I can't believe how crappy my old code used to be.
The language is certainly in decline, but it is also still evolving so I wouldn't quite call it dead. Dead is when all innovation and growth stops. The various compilers are still making changes, improvements, and adding functionality they feel is useful.
Also note that one Pascal variant that became a descendant language, Ada, is still quite active. It was the version of Pascal that was picked up by the US department of defense, and they are loathe to give it up.
Pascal has been used in many systems. Those systems didn't just vanish because the language became less popular.
> Does anyone use freepascal or delphi?
Yes, some people do. Not many, but some.
> has anyone written a game in pascal and had a great time?
Absolutely.
> has anyone written a game in pascal and had a nightmare getting it finished?
Absolutely.
>would the ratio of good times/bad times be any different in C++ than in pascal?
Yes. C++ is considerably more complex, and I would say the ratio of good times to bad is much worse than Pascal. Although C++ is what professional programmers currently use in game studios, this is not because the language produces more good times. It is because the language offers lower-level access than some languages, but high enough level concepts that you can get quite a lot done with it. Not too long ago C++ was shunned because of the extra complexity and because the cost of some features made it a bad choice for that generation's high performance computing required by games. C++ is rather horrible when it comes to productivity and fun times; I am orders of magnitude more productive when I work in other languages like C# or python or scripting languages like Lua and usually have more fun in the process.
