# Lazarus IDE

50 Hacker News commenters recommended Lazarus IDE and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, fast native IDE for building small cross-platform desktop apps with Object Pascal; critics say it feels dated and lacks modern IDE features.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast, lean native apps (6 comments): "Lazarus (FreePascal IDE / Delphi clone) gets it right. You get performance, low resource usage, portability and a good UI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50221329)) "Someone like me, OTOH, can produce small and tight software because I programmed in Delphi (now Lazarus)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366230)) "Pascal/Lazarus/Delphi strike such a nice balance of responsiveness in the development lifecycle" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144205))
- Free and open source (5 comments): "the easiest way to make a lean and fast native Windows app without paying for tooling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47477383)) "Lazarus and the Free Pascal compiler are open source, and amazing replacements." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49973116)) "it is fully open source. No restrictions but the ones of the software itself." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483010))
- Cross-platform native GUIs (4 comments): "it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271671)) "If you build an app with Lazarus and LCL, you CAN have it work cross-platform." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434393)) "The killer app with Lazarus is it's cross platform GUI capabilities." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148927))
- Quick, pleasant development feedback loop (3 comments): "that is the sort of Feedback loop that I miss in python and go GUI builders that I've used previously, and why I keep coming back to Lazarus" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49063169)) "Pascal/Lazarus/Delphi strike such a nice balance of responsiveness in the development lifecycle" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144205)) "Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524005))

## What people warn about

- Dated look, stuck in time (4 comments): "very dated and doesn't look and feel quite as polished, there's been a lot of modern IDE advancements and none of them have made their way to Lazarus" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49275711)) "If you're used to contemporary development environments, Lazarus feels like a clunky throwback." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042122)) "It's a bit outdated these days, e.g. missing LSP support." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162995))
- Missing LSP, C++ and modern features (3 comments): "Last time I tried Lazarus, the strangest feature that FPC was missing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50145297)) "It's a bit outdated these days, e.g. missing LSP support." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162995)) "I wish Lazarus had support for C++ as well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271984))
- Compiler and app bugs (2 comments): "Also Lazarus had compiler bugs on arm32 which prevented us from using it in professional barcode readers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070006)) "Lazarus is not exactly pinnacle of bug free apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47316330))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides.md): 233 recommend
- [IntelliJ IDEA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea.md): 206 recommend
- [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio.md): 165 recommend
- [Delphi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi.md): 126 recommend
- [Xcode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xcode.md): 100 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Lazarus IDE", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lazarus/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).