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I prefer DoubleCommander: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/
It is a free, cross-platform alternative, also written in Pascal and (IMHO) has surpassed TotalCommander in many ways.
Kinesis keyboards config tools are written in Pascal using Lazarus IDE - I haven't tried compiling it myself but it runs fine under on macOS and Wine on Linux
https://github.com/KinesisCorporation/SmartSetApps
I started learning Pascal (using Turbo Pascal 7) in ca 2003-2004, then learnt Delphi to write Windows desktop apps with MySQL. Probably pretty advanced for a high schoolers at that time.
Pascal is a general purpose programming language (like C/C++), which is not limited to teaching programming basics. The first Photoshop and classic MacOS were partly written in it.
All the cool kids nowadays most likely use Go or Rust. Pascal is still alive pretty well, even though you don't see it often enlisted on job vacancies these days. Now you can use Delphi to write MacOS, Android, and iOS apps as well. If you want to write desktop apps which easily buildable on Windows/Linux/Mac, then Lazarus is a good option. Of course there's an ongoing effort for Android: LAMW (https://github.com/jmpessoa/lazandroidmodulewizard)
A good reference is "Pascal in Three Days". Should be enough to help you learn the language basics.
An extended fork of FREE!ship[0] (abandoned since 2007), FREE!ship Plus[1] was ported from Delphi to Lazarus/FPC & Qt since 2015 and actively maintained till October 2020.[2,3]
Author of original opensource FREE!ship switched to develop its proprietary variant, DELFTship, which still actively maintained.[3]
[0] https://sourceforge.net/projects/freeship/
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20160831005653/http://www.hydrons...
[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/freeship-plus-in-lazarus/
[3] https://github.com/markmal/freeship-plus-in-lazarus
[4] https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/free-ship-continues-as-de...
I love Rust, but its model and specifics would make it difficult to learn how to write code in other languages.
For low-level code, I think Carbon may fill that niche in the future. If it doesn't, C++ may be a good candidate once up-to-date books have been written and compilers actually support the modern spec. Classrooms/guides would need to move away from the still-lingering "C++ is C with classes" approach and use the standard library before that can be a reality, but this book[0] by Bjarne Stroustrup himself demonstrates the future C++ _could_ have if all the modern language features become usable.
In business, C++ will still be the domain of ancient clusterfucks compiled by MSVC++ 6 in many areas, similar to how most Java code is still built around Java 8 because that was the most recent stable version for many projects' lifecycle (and Oracle's decision to only ship JRE 8 to consumers doesn't help) and how .NET 4 is still taught in schools because the new and scary dotnet tool doesn't map 1-to-1 with the old way of working. I can't imagine microcontroller toolkits supporting a modern version of _any_ language in the first place.
However, if more people would learn modern C++ (or a replacement, like Carbon), I think this class of programming languages can have the same growth and hype Rust has enjoyed for the past years.
I'm keeping my eye on Carbon and Zig. Google's influence has managed to push Go to the forefront despite its many quirks, and Zig seems to be focused on doing "C, but right" rather than "C++, but right" which so far is looking pretty promising.
It's also fun to see Jakt[1] being developed in real time; I don't think it's a language that will be useful for production software any time soon, but on the other hand it's a language that actually produces binaries reliably (unlike pre-alpha Carbon or pre-release Zig, the latter exposing many problems after switching to a self-hosted compiler).
[0]: https://www.stroustrup.com/tour3.html
[1]: https://github.com/SerenityOS/jakt