I want to list the top 5 programming languages which I won’t suggest to a newbie programmer in the year 2023. That is mostly because they have been replaced with another language or I find their alternative more promising. I also considered their demand in the job market.
Visual Basic
Microsoft created Visual Basic in 1991 mostly to be used in its products. Later in the year, 2000 Microsoft came up with a new programming language named C# that either replaces Visual Basic in most places or can be used alternatively. As of today, C# is the preferred language for Microsoft.
In the following picture, you can see that Visual Basic was pretty popular back in 2004 and now is almost flattened.
Ruby
A few years ago Ruby was pretty popular among the programming Bootcamps because of the Ruby on Rails framework. Ruby on Rails was the reason Ruby got popular again, but currently, the hype is gone and other frameworks are being used more often. There are still well-paying jobs for Ruby on Rails but mostly are for supporting the existing applications. The main reason I wouldn’t choose Ruby is that the current demand in the job market is not big enough.
CoffeeScript
This language was supposed to be a better version of Javascript with better readability, but the recent improvement in Javascript solved those issues and made CoffeeScript useless and it got obsolete in January 2020.
Perl
Unless you are working in a company that has a Perl code base I don’t see a good reason to learn it in 2023. Python has replaced Perl in most companies. Perl had some bold problems like being slow and not supporting portability. Perl is losing its popularity very fast and its trend looks like a flat line. I believe it won’t be a good investment for the future.
PHP
PHP mainly is used for coding server-side web applications and still is being used in a lot of companies. There are a lot of jobs out there for PHP developers, but I wouldn’t learn it because it’s not a well-designed language in comparison to the other programming languages that do the same thing. It also is not scalable enough.
Objective-c
Objective-c used to be the main language for Apple, but later in 2014, Apple came up with a new programming language called Swift which is easier and cleaner. Therefore, most current companies are using Swift instead, and don’t make sense to invest in objective-c in 2023.
Let’s be clear, these programming languages are still relevant in some sectors and people are using them, but it doesn’t worth the time and money investment for the majority of people as their first programming language. You might be working in a company that used one of these programming languages and that can make it a good investment for you to learn the language.
After all, this is only my personal opinion and there will be people who are going to disagree.
