Note, I think the point wasn't that Pascal didn't have writeln, rather that you couldn't write (implement) writeln in Pascal (presumably due to missing variadic functions).

So having writeln isn't really the issue, the issue is that writeln is magic/a built-in.

Is free pascal self hosted?

You could write something along the lines of `writeln` using `array of const` with today's Free Pascal. It's still strictly better that it's actually implemented as a built-in for various reasons, though.

Also, yes, Free Pascal is entirely self-hosted from the bottom up, making use of inline assembly blocks in some places where it's necessary. It is to Pascal what GCC is to C and C++, basically (which is to say, it has no real dependencies on toolchains other than itself).

> Is free pascal self hosted?

Yes.