I just got into a new job at an organization that develops Windows applications in Object Pascal.
Delphi 10.3 is the most common IDE being used between developers here. However my first impressions of it weren't the best and reading I found Lazarus as an alternative, but haven't installed it yet. I'm pretty new in Object Pascal development and I already need to learn a bunch of things, but it doesn't scare me, so it would be nice to go forward with a good IDE choice.
I'm not sure these options are simply interchangeable, since Wikipedia says Lazarus is "for programmers developing with the Object Pascal language, which is as close as possible to Delphi". Any thoughts would be very welcome! Thanks very much.
I've been working with the "new generation Delphi" (unicode versions, 2009->10.4) for ~12 years now. Since then, Embacadero has spent a lot of effort into the product (even though not as much as e.g., VS) and added a lot of features over the past years. Not all of them are needed by everyone, but they also extended/improved Pascal syntax a lot (e.g., local variables), which might lead to incompatibility with Lazarus.
Lazarus is an honorable open source project worth to support. It's been a while since I last had a look at a current version of it. But without diminishing this project: everytime I did, it felt a bit a "limited beginner's tool" compared to the commercial product from Embarcadero. Code was not compatible and several convenience features were missing (code completion, tools, wizards, etc.). Yes, it costs a lot of money, also for maintenance, but fortunately, my company is willing to invest here, which was (so far) the right choice.
In case your organization also has sufficient budget, I would definitely recommend Delphi. Due to inconsistencies between both "language dialects", I would strongly advise against mixing Delphi and Lazarus code.
Seeing as Delphi and Lazarus projects are not interchangeable, I doubt you truly have a choice since you will (most likely) share projects and source code with your colleagues. There are also probably third party components used in those projects which might be Delphi-specific.
In real life, Lazarus is too far from Delphi, from installing third-party components to the compatibility of base classes. Does your company use VCL or FireMonkey?
It depends on your application. I created fully commercial applications with Delphi and also with Lazarus and as long as you do not need any special components, give lazarus a try. Maybe a lazarus distribution like CodeTyphon could give you a more "complete" IDE. If the price is also in within your consideration of your choice, keep in mind that on the second year of a subscription of Delphi, you pay less for the renewal...
Migrate from one to another is not easy but feasable.
