5 Programming Languages That Are Declining in Usage

From the world’s first commercially available programming language (FORTRAN) to the myriad languages used in the present day- many languages have received love from developers, while many have received their hatred.

However, the case may be; choosing a programming language to establish a digital form of business is a crucial decision for many businesses today. Every language has its own quirks, but some have so many that no developer feels motivated to work on them.

This lack of interest subsequently results in lower popularity and eventually leads to a once over-hyped programming language being forgotten. Besides that, there are other reasons why a language gradually loses its popularity among software developers, project managers, and software development companies alike.

In fact, programming languages play a key role in finding a solution for one of the problems concerning the hiring of talent in IT workplaces. According to a report published by Coding Sans, Hiring proficient talents is the biggest concern in software development for managers.

Managers can find the best talents only when they know the language where they require expertise. But more importantly, it is important for them to know which languages fare the worst in the community and industry alike.

So without further ado, here are the Worst Programming languages of 2019:

1. Objective- C

Objective- C is an object-oriented, general purpose programming language introduced to the world in 1984. It was used in the development of OS X and iOS apps up until 2014 when Apple announced the Swift programming language.

At its annual WWDC conference in 2014, Apple launched Swift to much fanfare from the developer community. One of the main goals with swift was to make it popular among mobile app developers, which would ultimately result in an increased number of apps developed for iOS; thereby enhancing the app ecosystem.

After 4 years, Swift has indeed taken off well and is now the preferred language for iOS app development. But what about Objective- C? Well, its popularity is gradually receding as new developers are considering the more-beginner friendly Swift over the latter.

2. CoffeeScript:

Some of the things in modern JavaScript were seen in CoffeeScript nearly 8 years ago! But despite all of it, CoffeeScript is almost dead, and for obvious reasons.

While it more or less succeeded in an attempt to make JavaScript a bit more readable, JavaScript’s ES6 version upgrade spelled the beginning of doom for this once-known programming language. ES6 made JavaScript almost as fast as CoffeeScript, thereby making taking away its value at the time.

Today, CoffeeScript is dead, kind of. For it was basically a set of hacks that were useful for a time until ES6 showed up.

3. Perl:

Developed in 1987, Perl is a programming language that has lost its popularity in the presence of competing languages such as Ruby and Python. Honestly, it was quite good for its time back in 1994. It was even considered as one of the top Programming languages at the time!

The main reason why Perl has a place in this list is that the language is so old and so inferior to python that no young or relatively experienced developer would be working on codes written on Perl.

Another major problem with Perl was the fact that it wasn’t really good with anything. In fact, a report by Stack Overflow in 2017 revealed that Perl was the most disliked programming language based on the ratio of likes and dislikes on Stack Overflow developer stories.

4. Lua

Lua is an open-source programming language popular in gaming and web servers. It is used for the development of some popular games including ROBLOX and Angry Birds. So why gives Lua a place in this list of worst programming languages? For one, the number of Lua developers far exceed than their demand in the market.

Unlike the other languages that came around the same time, such as R; the popularity of the Lua language has remained more or less stagnant.

5. Erlang

One of the creators of the Erlang language, Joe Armstrong passed away this week on 21st April. While he may no longer be among us, his legacy still lives in the form of the Erlang programming language.

Erlang was created by Armstrong, Mike Williams, and Robert Virding in 1986 while working with Ericcson telecommunications. Erlang is mainly used in applications of instant messaging and telecommunications systems. In fact, it is also used in the development of messenger applications such as WhatsApp and Facebook.

So why does Erlang have a place in this list? Well, a fact is that its growth has been declining over the years. The demand for Erlang developers has been gradually declining, with its utility being limited to the telecommunications industry.

Wrapping Up:

I hope through I am able to give you an idea of some of the worst programming languages in the world. These programming languages are being hated by millions.

So, if you are a business owner who wants to avail mobile or website development services, or if you are student who want to make a BIG in the software development industry; you should avoid these languages.

I am sure most of the people won’t agree with my listing of worst programming languages. So, let’s do a positive DEBATE in the comment box to justify our answers :)

Also Read: Full Stack Developers: Everything You Need to Know

5 Programming Languages That Are Declining in Usage was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.