Reprinted from: Grape City official website
Original source: https://dzone.com/articles/5-coding-languages-that-will-disappear-in-10-years
Over time, new development languages have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a rain, and programmers have found newer and simpler working methods through these development languages. Many of them have gradually become the mainstream of the technical community. One of the unfortunate side effects of this progress is that some old development languages have entered the historical garbage dump because of their replacement. If a language cannot maintain its value over time, it will either gradually become obscured or become a newer and better language.
Recently, we have relearned the details of this process from the development of the COBOL language. In the 1960s and 1970s, it used to be the language of choice for many U.S. banks and government agencies' applications, but it was eventually replaced by simpler and more efficient development languages. Although the systems developed in COBOL still exist, when some government agencies plan to completely update their application systems, they will find that there are almost no developers who can fully master the COBOL language.
Just as the popularity of COBOL has faded, some of the development languages we are exposed to may also slowly disappear in the following time. In this article, we will take a look at 5 development languages that may disappear in the next 10 years. We understand that some of these languages may be good for some people, so before the beginning of the main text, we still hope that everyone can treat them as objectively as possible.
1. Ruby
Ruby became popular immediately after its release in 1999, and the most impressive thing for programmers is that it allows them to build applications quickly. Soon after, in 2004, with the release of the Ruby on Rails framework, Ruby also hit the top of the list of programmers' favorite languages. It has spent a solid decade in the spotlight, but even so, for various reasons, it finally appeared in the list of this article.
So why do I think Ruby might disappear? One factor contributing to its decline is speed. Its applications tend to be less efficient than many other popular languages, such as Javascript, Go, and even Python (under certain frameworks). Compared with other development languages, Ruby stays in the past in many ways. For example, the MVC architecture that made Ruby on Rails a miracle of its times is now considered obsolete and unwieldy by many programmers.
2. Visual Basic
Considering that Visual Basic may be one of the least popular programming languages, it is logical to put it on this list. Visual Basic was released by Microsoft in 1991, as the main tool for building Windows, it did achieve this goal. But with the release of C# in 2000, because C# is more concise, provides a wider range of functions, and is more suitable for cloud and mobile development (they play an important role in the current market) and other advantages, many programmers officially abandoned VB and turned to Using C#, more importantly, it seems that even its creators have abandoned it, because Microsoft said they have no plans to develop it further.
3. Haskell
Haskell is another ancient language that was released decades ago. For Haskell, its era may soon be over. Haskell is mainly used by researchers and scholars to build programs that perform complex exchanges and deductions for their work, so it is generally considered difficult to learn. Due to the high difficulty of learning Haskell and the very limited number of active users, its scope of use is very narrow, and the number of developers using it in the future may be further reduced. Although the last stable version of Haskell was released in 2010, this long maintenance cycle is of no avail.
4. Perl
Like Visual Basic, most developers who use Perl don't like it. When Perl was released in 1987, it was hailed as a language that everyone can easily master (whether they are programming beginners or professionals), and can be used for many purposes. However, in 1991, the emergence of Python undermined Perl's plan to rule the world.
Although Python's syntax is larger and stricter, it makes it more straightforward for users to use scripts to achieve their goals. This is also a game rule change. Python began to fade Perl in the first decade of this century and became the language of choice for beginners. Over the past 15 years, Perl usage has been steadily declining, and we have not seen anything that will stop this trend in the short term.
5. Objective-C
The relationship between Objective-C and Apple is as close as the relationship between action cameras and GoPro. These two tools are almost exclusively used by one company. Although Objective-C has been used in MacOS, iOS and OSX development for more than two decades (1996 to present), few programmers now use this language. All this is thanks to Swift.
Swift was developed by Apple and officially released in 2014. It aims to become a new development language standard for MacOS, iOS and several other Apple-related platforms. Although Obj-C is largely based on the complex C language, Swift effectively removes these elements while adding new features such as automatic memory management, support for Cocoa Touch, and type-safe integration.
Swift has successfully achieved high stability and user adoption, and Apple is still rewriting the Obj-C library to make it easier for supporters of the old language to transition. Although there is still a lot of discussion about which of these two languages is better, the current trend shows that the prospect of Objective-C will gradually dim.
in conclusion
Although the development languages listed above seem to be going downhill, their disappearance is not a certainty. If their creators and communities devote enough energy to update and maintain them, add new attractive features and more useful features, they may become lively again.
If you are considering starting to learn a development language, then you have many factors to consider. And if you just want to pursue coding as a hobby, you just have to listen to your heart and choose the one that excites you the most, even if it is no longer widely used or is being eliminated. But if you are engaged in development work or plan to enter the software development industry through a certain language, you should not only choose the most fashionable choice or the development language that has been hyped, you should integrate the functions, market needs and the foreseeable future It would be better to evaluate the development potential from several angles.