Free Pascal is almost identical to C++ apart from syntax; they're both compiled, statically typed Algol descendants with object orientation and generics bolted on.

Which is partly why Free Pascal use is still marginal - the only significant advantage is compilation speed, while lack of popularity is a major disadvantage in terms of libraries, quality of optimizing compilers, etc.

On top of compilation speed, Go also has CSP style support for concurrency built in, which is something that C++ will only ever have bolted on.

The standard gnu linker is quite slow.

Free Pascal does have generics, but doesn't appear to have equivalent template metaprogramming. C++ that only uses templates for generics may be similarly fast-compiling.

I'd compare C to Pascal.

I see two drawbacks with 'Free Pascal', first the name (naming your language 'Pascal' is a surefire way of getting lots of people to turn off on the spot, even if it had lots of merits), secondly there does not seem to be any lively community around the language (but that may be related to the first item).

The Delphi community is small but vocal. It may just be that you don't notice them if you're not looking for them!

Personally I think delphi will always be one of the most undervalued platforms of all time. Good IDE, lightning fast, lots of libraries. In many ways it was way ahead of its time.

It's also an excellent example of product quality not being the metric by which success will be determined.

Unfortunately.