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The popularity of programming languages depends a lot on trends and how effective they are for developers. The easier it is for the programmers, the more popular and wide accepted the languages will be. There have been many instances where even after a grand introduction some languages do not meet the expectations of the developers to the fullest. So, here is the list of top 10 programming languages that has failed to gain popularity among developers.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is part of Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ: MSFT) legacy software, Visual Basic, which Microsoft built to help write programs for the Windows operating system. Visual Basic for Applications runs as an internal programming language in Microsoft Office (MS Office, Office) applications such as Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word, and Visio. VBA is an old language. It is old, overly complicated, and truly bad at doing some of the essential things the more powerful languages can do. In fact, it is so old that Microsoft no longer supports its development.
Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. This is the primary programming language used by Apple for the OS X and iOS operating systems and their respective APIs, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Retro syntax, sideways superset thinking, and autocratic inclinations are some of the reasons why Objective C is not appealing to developers.
Assembly language is a low-level programming language for a computer or other programmable device that is closest to the machine language. It is often specific to a particular computer architecture so there are multiple types of assembly languages. ARM is an increasingly popular assembly language. Improved compiler technology has eliminated the need for assembly language. Today, machines are so fast that we no longer need to use assembly.
COBOL was created by The COSADYL Committee in 1960. The name COBOL is an acronym for 'Common Business-Oriented Language', and (as the name suggests) it was designed primarily for business use. The jury is still out on whether COBOL is one of the dead programming languages or not. This is because it lives on in quite a few legacy systems that are too expensive to update.
LISP as a programming language is on the verge of failure. The developer community suggests many reasons such as messy syntax with parenthesized prefix notation and is mostly used as a garbage collector. Though it is a versatile and functional language, developers have abandoned it for other more popular languages with similar functionalities.
Like COBOL, Ada is a mostly-dead programming language that lives on in legacy systems. The language aimed to replace the hundreds of languages used by the US Department of Defence. Ada, though complex and ambitious, is still used for some critical systems, alongside a minority of projects or functions. But it is gradually fading out of the limelight in favor of more modern languages.
Perl is a language that's been on and off its deathbed for years now. Work on Perl 6 started in 2000 and was in development for 15 years, finally being released in December 2015. During this time, many named Perl among the other dead programming languages that had fallen out of favor. The release of Perl 6 did revive the language somewhat, but it's far less mainstream than it once was.
Ruby came into being in 1995, developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto. There was a time when Ruby was the language to learn and use. While it's still going today, much of its early popularity has faded. For this reason, many believe that Ruby will decline further in the coming years. Eventually, it will join the other dead programming languages on this list.
Haskell was initially developed to be a compact language that can be used to handle symbolic computations and list processing applications. Though it has easy-to-use syntax, maintainable code, shorter lead times, and higher reliability, it is constantly losing its importance as a coding language. In a few years, it might become unwanted, as new languages like Go, and Python are fast gaining traction.
R is a programming language used basically to process data primarily through statistical methods. While it is having significant benefits over other programming languages like Python, it has been losing its popularity among its patrons. Its ranking went down to 11 from 9 on the TOIBE index in just one month. Though it may not disappear completely, it will definitely lose its importance given the traction other programming languages are gaining.
