Pascal is a smaller language, and so easier to come to grips with at first glance. The syntax is tailored towards some verbosity which usually appeals to beginners. However, the downside is that you don't have a lot of leverage to do things in Pascal: Python pushes you down a path where you are writing something productive very quickly and can reach into the standard libraries to do many tasks - it makes some things very easy. Pascal requires some time to prepare the solution and encode it in syntax, and it's harder to find what you need, but there is usually code somewhere online that you can adapt. This is a lot to ask of beginners who want to do practical work, though. As of right now Pascal retains a lot of strength in desktop GUI code.

In terms of safety/dangerous code, modern Object Pascal style lets you be as dangerous as C if you want, but the default semantics are much more comfortable, and take you away from the danger zone more often.

Both Python and Pascal are relatively easy to get up and running with, and have pretty solid, standardized toolchains for industry use: in contrast C and C++ leave the build process relatively undefined and varying between compilers and platforms, which has resulted in a huge amount of friction to get any project building on a new machine.

Although I use Python extensively and started to forget about Pascal (ex Delphi guy here), Pascal is a much better beginner language IMO.

Start with Python and you're most likely to be stuck with dynamic typing/runtime mindset and it'll distance you too far away from OS level native land.

OTOH starting with Pascal, you'll learn a great deal of low level (well, relatively) stuff and that will make you appreciate the higher level languages when the time comes and will let you leverage them more efficiently. Also as a bonus, a big bonus I think, Pascal will let you feel at home if you ever need C/C++/D in your career.

Overall not well. It's statically typed, which can be helpful. And as mentioned, Pascal, was used widely in teaching so one would say well. However! So was Python, in it's ABC infancy.

Note that there are multiple Pascals, especially in the late 70s and 80s. Pure, true Pascal was annoying and restrictive [1].

No commercially successful Pascal was pure. The classic was Turbo Pascal which was disdained by purists but enormously successful. It's inventor went on to work on Delphi (a sort of Pascal which is still popular) C#, and Typescript.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

1. e.g. semicolons were separators, not terminators. You'd get a syntax error if you had a semicolon after your last statement of a program/procedure.

IMO it's the best language for absolute beginners, if we are talking about classic Pascal without Borland extensions. It's very small language which could be taught in a few lessons yet it's powerful enough to learn classic data structures and algorithms.

The main drawback is that Pascal is not commercially successful, so you'll learn it and move on. Python, on the other side, is widely used, so Python knowledge is useful on its own.

Start from Pascal if you want to learn a lot of languages. I specifically would suggest to dive deep after Pascal and learn some assembly language, may be x86. They you'll have good basics and you can learn almost any language you want, C would be good, for example.

Main problem with Python IMO is that it's too high-level, it's dynamic, it uses GC. All those things are too far away from real machine code, so if you'll learn Python first, it might be hard to learn low-level programming and it's useful even if you're using JavaScript.

Harder in some ways, because types matter a lot more, private methods and less namespacing.

But the IDE makes GUI programming ridiculously easy, something Python can't compare on.

Not sure if Wirth designed Pascal to be beginner-friendly, but IMO, it is.