I do use Lazarus/FreePascal for multiplatform GUI apps. It is also very easy to write servers in. Unfortunately performance is worse vs C/C++ and frankly "batteries" included in C++ are way more powerful and simpler to use so I choose C++ for backends. As for all that FUD around C++ - I am not C++ expert at all but I find modern C++ to be very productive, fast for backend development and pretty safe unless one's goal is to purposely shoot themselves in the foot.

What batteries are included in C++? There's the STL, but most of the rest is a mess to the point it's actively avoided in favor of alternatives (iostreams, locale).

Now if you do something like C++ with Qt, that's a very different proposition - but that applies both to batteries being included, and to the overall coding style.