I presume we are talking about GUI programs:

A. Delphi --- easy choice (or C++ Builder if I had to use C++) B. Also Delphi --- it supports macOS (arm64 + x64), Linux, and Windows

If I have to write a CLI app, I'm probably picking Go or Rust.

That article is from 2011. I can imagine that in 13 years this may no longer be true.

The open-source Hidden Bar is my current solution to this problem, but I think I prefer this native fix.

https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden

  brew install --cask hiddenbar

Perl's still got a special place in my heart, but honestly, I don't use it much these days. I mainly bring it out when I'm processing a lot of text or writing scripts to be used by Perl-savvy teammates.

But here's a cool thing - in coding interviews for non-SWE roles (I'm in security), when they say 'pick any language', I go straight for Perl. Why? Because it's very forgiving when prototyping a solution quickly, has great data-structures without a lot of setup (auto-vivification!), built in grep and map features, etc.

> After Heilsberg moved to MS, a lot of improvements were made in VB that utlimately made Delphi less attractive

Well, not actually. With Anders' move to Microsoft, VB6 (aka, VB "classic") was discontinued. Microsoft supported Visual Basic syntax on the .NET runtime, but the vast majority of VB programmers considered this to be a different language because developing for the .NET Framework (remember this is ~2001) was a huge departure from VB Classic.

Many VB developers petitioned Microsoft to open-source VB6 or continue releasing improvements on it. Microsoft did not and chose to continue with their .NET + C# strategy.