Everything in life comes with an expiry date. So is the case with programming languages. They also run the risk of becoming extinct and fading into history. In spite of all this, their solid influence is still prevalent on development techniques and coding styles. However, certain programming languages like ALGOL and LISP no longer get the importance and acclaim they once used to enjoy. By telling this, we don’t mean that these languages will vanish completely. There are countless codebases written on them. 

Here in this piece, we will discuss about 4 programming languages that might become obscure over the next few years. If in case, your career is dependent on any of these programming languages, you are advised to upgrade your skills at the earliest. 

Objective - C

It is Apple’s 35 years old programming language that is moving towards oblivion. Primarily because, in 2014, Apple launched another new and improved language called Swift to meet the industry demand for cross-platform app development. Undoubtedly, Swift is feature-rich and developers across the globe have started using it. Despite that, the popularity of Objective-C still exists as many developers still prefer to work with this language.

At some point in future, Objective-C will be completely out of the market and Apple also expects the same. On the other hand, Swift is an effective programming language for iOS and macOS apps. 

Erlang

It is a well-known programming language that was released to the open-source community in 1998. It is respected and trusted for its reliability, resiliency and concurrency. It became a basis for a large number of online messaging apps. But despite being so long in the industry, it could never gain followers. Also, when it comes to tasks like code maintenance and debugging, it shows its age. 

Haskell

Haskell is a powerful language for functional programming but because of its complexity, this legacy language could never attract a strong user community required for long-lasting acceptance and success. A very small community of users are using it and that has prevented it from becoming a truly extinct programming language. 

Perl

Another programming language on the verge of becoming extinct is Perl. Launched in the 1980s as a scripting language, Perl later became popular as a general-purpose language. Despite being old, the language still remains significant in areas like data science and analytics.