Whether you are just a newbie or an expert. You need to keep a tab of programming languages. Choice of programming language is a very important decision for any developer. There is always a lot of debate going around it. Today we would be looking at a list of programming languages with declining popularity and in which you might wanna avoid.
Disclaimer
I am not about to tell you in particular which language to learn or not to learn. This article will actually guide you in making the best choice of language.
📌Why the decline in language popularity? The reason is primarily that developers keep embracing new languages and frameworks they find it easier to work with.
Below are the languages you might wanna avoid
- Python
Just kidding😁. We know you love Python and it's probably your first programming language.
Don't fret, Python isn't going anywhere. I'm actually learning Python too. Happy now? All right then. Let's get serious.
- PERL
Short for Practical Extraction and Reporting language. It is a high-level language used for general-purpose programming. The reason why it has become less popular is due to its complex syntax, high CPU and memory requirements, and poor structuring in argument. If you have been using Perl in the past, you may move to Python or Java or C or JavaScript.
- Scala
Short for Scalable Language. Scala uses an expressive typing system that ensures statistical abstraction that is secure and consistent. So if this is the case then why is it having declining popularity? It is hard to understand. Its syntax is oddly different from other programming languages. It has no tail-recursive optimization. More importantly, it has poor developer pool thereby making it have a weak community. Scala alternatives include Kotlin, Python, Java, Go.
- Objective-C
Objective-C is a simple programming language designed to achieve sophisticated object-oriented programming. It is a strict super-set of the C language. Any code written in C can be used in Obj-C without being re-written. However, it has some features of its own that cannot be used in traditional C programming. So Obj-C lost its popularity with the advent of Swift; which is now the language preferred for IOS development. Moreover, Obj-C lacks namespacing and also contains explicit pointers. Alternatives to Obj-C are Swift, C#, C++, Kotlin.
- COBOL
Short for Common Business Oriented Language. COBOL is a compiled English-like programming language designed for business use. It is primarily used in finance and administrative systems for companies and government. The reasons for its declining usage include strong typing rules, difficulty in usage and parsing. COBOL alternatives include Python, Java, C, JavaScript.
- PASCAL
PASCAL was once popular. It is a procedural programming language that was originally designed as a tool to assist the teaching of programming. Its pitfalls include lack of support, issue in control flow and evaluation. Alternatives to PASCAL are Delphi, C#, Dart.
- Haskell
Haskell is named after Haskell Brooks Curry; a US mathematician who contributed a lot to logic. Haskell is based on lambda calculus and so uses the Greek letter as its logo. The reasons for its downfall are its complicated interface, non suitability for critical application, higher learning curve. Popular alternatives are Java, Python, Ruby, PHP : )
- CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript compiles to JavaScript with syntax inspired by ruby, Python and Haskell. Its cons include lack of explicit scoping, lack of named functions, bad exception handling. Alternatives to CoffeScript are JavaScript, TypeScript, Python.
- Erlang
Erlang is a general-purpose functional programming language with a garbage-collected runtime system. It is not popular because it has no community, it has bad market, it is hard to setup and deploy, and its debugging is complex. Alternatives to Erlang are Elixir, Go, Python.
- ELM
ELM is a functional domain-specific language developed for creating web browser-based GUI with better usability. The reasons for its decline are lack of updates, lack of momentum, purely academic usage, complex with external JS libraries. Alternatives to ELM include TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Rust.
- VBNET
VBNET is a language which is totally dying. It is a multi-paradigm object-oriented programming language implemented on dotnet, mono and dotnet framework with a no-code design system. As a programming language, it has many quirks such as inability to handle pointers, cannot be transferred to other OS, slow processing. Alternatives include Python, JavaScript, C#.
Thanks for taking your time to go through this article. I hope you learnt something new. It took me a while to gather all the info I needed to write this article. Please subscribe to my newsletter so you don't miss my upcoming articles. Just enter your email address and smash the subscribe button!