Which Programming Languages Are Dying? A Deep Dive into Perl, Haskell, Ruby, and More

Introduction

As programming languages evolve, the latest rankings suggest that six major languages are on the brink of extinction, shocking many developers.

Perl

Perl once dominated programming, but its design flaws and the rise of Perl 6 (now Raku) have rendered it obsolete. The author provides a simple "Goodbye World" CGI script written in Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html

";
print "Goodbye, world!
";

Given its limited modern use, the recommendation is to abandon Perl.

Haskell

Haskell is rumored to receive a major update this year. Although once used by major companies like Facebook and GitHub, its presence on the RedMonk language ranking remains modest, raising the question of whether it is dying.

Supporters highlight five strengths:

The community is diversifying and focusing on projects.

Haskell is used in mixed-language projects and end‑to‑end solutions.

The community offers strong user support.

Its adoption in FinTech is growing, though security and e‑commerce use remain limited.

Tooling such as Stack and Cabal now enjoys about 80% user adoption.

Readers are invited to weigh in on these opposing views.

Ruby

Ruby peaked about five years after its 1995 birth and was once beloved, but its popularity has waned, especially after Twitter migrated away from Ruby on Rails in 2011. The article includes a "Goodbye World" example in Ruby:

puts ‘Bye bye, Miss American Ruby! Drove my Chevy to the Levie…’
puts ’2011 was the day that Ruby died, yeah…’

It also shows a factorial program and its execution result for 1000!.

def fact(n)
  if n == 0
    1
  else
    n * fact(n-1)
  end
end
puts fact(ARGV[0].to_i)

Ruby’s decline is attributed to large platforms moving away from it.

Visual Basic.NET

The author recounts personal experience migrating VB6 code to VB.NET, noting that Microsoft’s focus shifted to C#. While VB.NET borrowed BASIC syntax, C# became the flagship language, leaving VB.NET to fade.

A sample VB.NET "Hello World" program is provided:

‘ Allow easy reference to the System namespace classes.
Imports System

Public Module modmain
  Sub Main()
    Console.WriteLine ("Hello World using Visual Basic!")
  End Sub
End Module

Adobe Flash and AIR (ActionScript)

Flash and AIR are platforms rather than languages; they rely on ActionScript, an ECMAScript variant. With Apple’s rejection of Flash on iPhone and the rise of HTML5, both Flash and AIR declined, leading to the disappearance of ActionScript.

Example ActionScript code:

package {
import flash.display.*;
import flash.text.*;
public class HelloWorld extends Sprite {
  private var greeting:TextField = new TextField();
  public function HelloWorld() {
    greeting.text = "Hello World!";
    greeting.x = 100;
    greeting.y = 100;
    addChild(greeting);
  }
}
}

Delphi’s Object Pascal

Object Pascal, once thriving via Delphi, has largely disappeared. Although Delphi still supports C# and C++, its focus has moved away from Pascal. The author shares a nostalgic note and a simple Object Pascal program:

program HelloWorld;
begin
  writeln('You say goodbye.')
end.

Overall, the article reflects on the inevitable decline of these languages and invites readers to comment on their personal experiences.