{"slug": "lazarus", "name": "Lazarus", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "Free, open-source cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal with a visual form designer.", "recommenders": 7, "commenters": 8, "warners": 1, "score": 5.496, "rising": 1.69, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-10-19", "why": "Recommended as a go-to tool for building native cross-platform desktop GUIs that produce self-contained binaries and responsive apps, and as beginner-friendly.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Native desktop GUIs", "Responsive apps"], "caveat": "Slow IDE", "short_quote": "Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it", "icon": true, "domain": "lazarus-ide.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.lazarus-ide.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Lazarus", "Lazarus IDE"], "verdict": [{"text": "Recommended as a go-to tool for building native cross-platform desktop GUIs", "cites": [{"id": 788346736, "item_id": 49271671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271671", "by": "DanielHB", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps", "excerpt": "I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available"}, {"id": 776384080, "item_id": 48524005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524005", "by": "Barrin92", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it", "excerpt": "My first experience with Pascal was only a few years ago by way of Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C. I'm sort of sad I missed the heyday of the Borland tooling because it seems incredibly productive even without nostalgia.", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeOberon \u2013 Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language"}]}, {"text": " that produce self-contained binaries and responsive apps, and as beginner-friendly.", "cites": [{"id": 788346736, "item_id": 49271671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271671", "by": "DanielHB", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps", "excerpt": "I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available"}, {"id": 790173137, "item_id": 49385821, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49385821", "by": "lelanthran", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Qt and Lazarus apps aren't laggy at all", "excerpt": "> One thing I think which is overlooked is the raw feeling of speed a good TUI can give you. The lowest grade consumer laptop could probably download my little dictionary program and still get true search-on-keystroke performance, because there is virtually nothing slowing down that path, no animations, no nothing. Now most of that comes down to the data structures involved and making sure nothing ever has to go over", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUI apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 732756176, "item_id": 45797261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797261", "by": "h4ck_th3_pl4n3t", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd.", "excerpt": "Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd. [1] https://www.lazarus-ide.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Anyone else use FreePascal as their low level language?"}]}, {"text": " One commenter found the IDE itself extremely slow,", "cites": [{"id": 753073809, "item_id": 47067113, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067113", "by": "zac23or", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I tried Lazarus in the past, but it's extremely slow", "excerpt": "I started using Delphi 3 and stopped at 7, migrating to web development (Rails, Django, etc.). Delphi was magical. Nothing compares to Delphi's productivity. Rails is good, but it doesn't even come close to Delphi's productivity. People love Go's speed. Go is glacially slow compared to Delphi. The WYSIWYG form editor is incredible. I can use Delphi 3 on a Windows machine with 16 MB of RAM. VCL is fantastic; the idea ", "context": "", "use_case": "Delphi alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi is 31 years old \u2013 innovation timeline"}]}, {"text": " and another notes that Free Pascal is verbose and the LCL framework carries a lot of boilerplate.", "cites": [{"id": 784132208, "item_id": 49008263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008263", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-07-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are \"human-written\".", "excerpt": "> the spirit behind this update is clear: to carve out a space for human-written projects. It is not that clear though. I use the Lazarus IDE for Free Pascal. Free Pascal is kinda verbose and the LCL framework Lazarus uses has a bunch of boilerplate and its design is biased towards tool-assisted development. As such, Lazarus itself writes a lot of code for you and you fill in the \"blanks\" that provide what you want t", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg bans vibe coded projects"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Native desktop GUIs", "summary": "Commenters use it to build cross-platform desktop apps with the native UI toolkit.", "quotes": [{"id": 788346736, "item_id": 49271671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271671", "by": "DanielHB", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps", "excerpt": "I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available"}, {"id": 776384080, "item_id": 48524005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524005", "by": "Barrin92", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it", "excerpt": "My first experience with Pascal was only a few years ago by way of Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C. I'm sort of sad I missed the heyday of the Borland tooling because it seems incredibly productive even without nostalgia.", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeOberon \u2013 Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language"}]}, {"label": "Responsive apps", "summary": "Apps built with it are described as not laggy, and it can produce self-contained binaries that just work.", "quotes": [{"id": 790173137, "item_id": 49385821, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49385821", "by": "lelanthran", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Qt and Lazarus apps aren't laggy at all", "excerpt": "> One thing I think which is overlooked is the raw feeling of speed a good TUI can give you. The lowest grade consumer laptop could probably download my little dictionary program and still get true search-on-keystroke performance, because there is virtually nothing slowing down that path, no animations, no nothing. Now most of that comes down to the data structures involved and making sure nothing ever has to go over", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUI apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 788346736, "item_id": 49271671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271671", "by": "DanielHB", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps", "excerpt": "I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available"}]}, {"label": "Pleasant to use", "summary": "Commenters call it great, and one says it is much more pleasant than C.", "quotes": [{"id": 776384080, "item_id": 48524005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524005", "by": "Barrin92", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it", "excerpt": "My first experience with Pascal was only a few years ago by way of Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C. I'm sort of sad I missed the heyday of the Borland tooling because it seems incredibly productive even without nostalgia.", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeOberon \u2013 Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language"}, {"id": 802354736, "item_id": 50147171, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50147171", "by": "andsoitis", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus is great.", "excerpt": "Lazarus is great. I also think Delphi is awesome. Don't feel the same \"get worse with every release\" vibe that you do. But, if you do, you could also check out Oxygene: https://www.remobjects.com/elements/oxygene/", "context": "", "use_case": "Pascal IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages"}]}, {"label": "Code generation", "summary": "The IDE writes much of the boilerplate and offers code completion from partial declarations.", "quotes": [{"id": 784132208, "item_id": 49008263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008263", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-07-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are \"human-written\".", "excerpt": "> the spirit behind this update is clear: to carve out a space for human-written projects. It is not that clear though. I use the Lazarus IDE for Free Pascal. Free Pascal is kinda verbose and the LCL framework Lazarus uses has a bunch of boilerplate and its design is biased towards tool-assisted development. As such, Lazarus itself writes a lot of code for you and you fill in the \"blanks\" that provide what you want t", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg bans vibe coded projects"}]}, {"label": "Beginner-friendly", "summary": "Recommended as especially good for beginners.", "quotes": [{"id": 732756176, "item_id": 45797261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797261", "by": "h4ck_th3_pl4n3t", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd.", "excerpt": "Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd. [1] https://www.lazarus-ide.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Anyone else use FreePascal as their low level language?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Slow IDE", "summary": "One former Delphi user found Lazarus extremely slow.", "quotes": [{"id": 753073809, "item_id": 47067113, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067113", "by": "zac23or", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I tried Lazarus in the past, but it's extremely slow", "excerpt": "I started using Delphi 3 and stopped at 7, migrating to web development (Rails, Django, etc.). Delphi was magical. Nothing compares to Delphi's productivity. Rails is good, but it doesn't even come close to Delphi's productivity. People love Go's speed. Go is glacially slow compared to Delphi. The WYSIWYG form editor is incredible. I can use Delphi 3 on a Windows machine with 16 MB of RAM. VCL is fantastic; the idea ", "context": "", "use_case": "Delphi alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi is 31 years old \u2013 innovation timeline"}]}, {"label": "Verbosity", "summary": "Free Pascal is verbose, and the LCL framework has a lot of boilerplate.", "quotes": [{"id": 784132208, "item_id": 49008263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008263", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-07-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are \"human-written\".", "excerpt": "> the spirit behind this update is clear: to carve out a space for human-written projects. It is not that clear though. I use the Lazarus IDE for Free Pascal. Free Pascal is kinda verbose and the LCL framework Lazarus uses has a bunch of boilerplate and its design is biased towards tool-assisted development. As such, Lazarus itself writes a lot of code for you and you fill in the \"blanks\" that provide what you want t", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg bans vibe coded projects"}]}, {"label": "Niche use", "summary": "One commenter says Lazarus/Free Pascal does fine in some niches.", "quotes": [{"id": 733981313, "item_id": 45873832, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873832", "by": "anthk", "date": "2025-11-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus/Free Pascal it's doing it fine in some niches.", "excerpt": "JimTCL. On Pascal, is not that old. Lazarus/Free Pascal it's doing it fine in some niches.", "context": "", "use_case": "Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?"}]}], "who": [], "tags": ["for desktop GUI apps", "cross-platform", "for beginners", "for Pascal developers", "portable Windows apps"], "use_cases": ["pascal development", "free pascal development", "pascal ide", "building gui apps", "cross-platform desktop apps", "building guis"], "compared": [{"slug": "delphi", "name": "Delphi", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144066", "title": "Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49384210", "title": "Stop Making TUIs", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49270621", "title": "Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386", "title": "Codeberg bans vibe coded projects", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48490927", "title": "FreeOberon \u2013 Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003672", "title": "Delphi is 31 years old \u2013 innovation timeline", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802354736, "item_id": 50147171, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50147171", "by": "andsoitis", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus is great.", "excerpt": "Lazarus is great. I also think Delphi is awesome. Don't feel the same \"get worse with every release\" vibe that you do. But, if you do, you could also check out Oxygene: https://www.remobjects.com/elements/oxygene/", "context": "", "use_case": "Pascal IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages"}, {"id": 802349473, "item_id": 50146842, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50146842", "by": "andsoitis", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus & Free Pascal (https://www.lazarus-ide.org)", "excerpt": "Check out: - Delphi (https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/features/delphi) - Lazarus & Free Pascal (https://www.lazarus-ide.org) - Oxygene (https://www.remobjects.com/elements/oxygene/) And since you remarked about \"modern languages\", have a look at https://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal", "context": "", "use_case": "Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages"}, {"id": 790173137, "item_id": 49385821, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49385821", "by": "lelanthran", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Qt and Lazarus apps aren't laggy at all", "excerpt": "> One thing I think which is overlooked is the raw feeling of speed a good TUI can give you. The lowest grade consumer laptop could probably download my little dictionary program and still get true search-on-keystroke performance, because there is virtually nothing slowing down that path, no animations, no nothing. Now most of that comes down to the data structures involved and making sure nothing ever has to go over", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUI apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 788346736, "item_id": 49271671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271671", "by": "DanielHB", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps", "excerpt": "I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "cross-platform desktop apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available"}, {"id": 784132208, "item_id": 49008263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008263", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-07-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are \"human-written\".", "excerpt": "> the spirit behind this update is clear: to carve out a space for human-written projects. It is not that clear though. I use the Lazarus IDE for Free Pascal. Free Pascal is kinda verbose and the LCL framework Lazarus uses has a bunch of boilerplate and its design is biased towards tool-assisted development. As such, Lazarus itself writes a lot of code for you and you fill in the \"blanks\" that provide what you want t", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg bans vibe coded projects"}, {"id": 776384080, "item_id": 48524005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524005", "by": "Barrin92", "date": "2026-06-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it", "excerpt": "My first experience with Pascal was only a few years ago by way of Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C. I'm sort of sad I missed the heyday of the Borland tooling because it seems incredibly productive even without nostalgia.", "context": "", "use_case": "building GUIs", "switched_from": "", "story": "FreeOberon \u2013 Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language"}, {"id": 753073809, "item_id": 47067113, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067113", "by": "zac23or", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I tried Lazarus in the past, but it's extremely slow", "excerpt": "I started using Delphi 3 and stopped at 7, migrating to web development (Rails, Django, etc.). Delphi was magical. Nothing compares to Delphi's productivity. Rails is good, but it doesn't even come close to Delphi's productivity. People love Go's speed. Go is glacially slow compared to Delphi. The WYSIWYG form editor is incredible. I can use Delphi 3 on a Windows machine with 16 MB of RAM. VCL is fantastic; the idea ", "context": "", "use_case": "Delphi alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Delphi is 31 years old \u2013 innovation timeline"}, {"id": 733981313, "item_id": 45873832, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873832", "by": "anthk", "date": "2025-11-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lazarus/Free Pascal it's doing it fine in some niches.", "excerpt": "JimTCL. On Pascal, is not that old. Lazarus/Free Pascal it's doing it fine in some niches.", "context": "", "use_case": "Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?"}, {"id": 732756176, "item_id": 45797261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797261", "by": "h4ck_th3_pl4n3t", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd.", "excerpt": "Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd. [1] https://www.lazarus-ide.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "Free Pascal development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Anyone else use FreePascal as their low level language?"}]}