Shout-out to Lazarus/FreePascal. It is like all the best parts of Delphi 5-7, and it is open source, free, and you can make commercial applications in it!
I have started using it in earnest and it is wonderful - and a company can never take it away from you; there's no "we're shifting focus..." announcements. No paid support for broken updates.
I can confirm this. I have used it a couple of years ago for a GUI app I needed at work (1): Lazarus was a real time saver! When a colleague asked me if he could use my app under Windows, the porting process was 100% painless: all the code (~1000 lines of code) recompiled in an instant and the application worked like a charm.
I have started using it in earnest and it is wonderful - and a company can never take it away from you; there's no "we're shifting focus..." announcements. No paid support for broken updates.
I honestly can't recommend it enough.