The computer era has revealed programming as the most important means of directing computers to execute the human’s desired tasks, thus increasing the level of human-computer interaction in our day-to-day lives. Nevertheless, the modern technological setting in which they are nowadays is subjected to constant reforms and upgrading. Once the language was considered the highest level of technical expertise in the past, it may become outdated very soon because of technological advancements and the emergence of better solutions for the same task. Here are some programming languages that are outdated and you should avoid learning in 2024:

1. Objective-C:

Objective-C, a language developed in 1986, was one of the key languages used in developing the iOS, macOS, and iPadOS applications by Apple. But as Swift was introduced in 2014 Objective-C started losing its place in the language hierarchy. Adriana, having been developed to grow the usage of iOS apps among Apple users, soon started to replace Objective-C because of its upgraded efficiency, modern version of the language, and features of safety. Apart from that, Swift's compatibility with Objective-C enabled developers to carry on from Objective-C to Swift with no effort in transitioning thus a more dramatic decline in the usage of Objective-C.

2. CoffeeScript:

CoffeeScript was adopted as a language of choice for coding a more readable JavaScript by making use of syntactic sugar and syntax similar to that of Ruby. CoffeeScript achieved this goal, through a cleaner syntax and some punctuation being avoided, JavaScript development became more enjoyable and fast. Nonetheless, the introduction of ECMAScript 6 (ES6) in 2015 gave JavaScript a blend of new features, making CoffeeScript outdated. ES6 was the version that included features like arrow functions, template literals, and destructuring assignments which many of the remaining shortcomings were tackled. The shift of developers from using the ES6 features directly thus led to a gradual decline in the demand for CoffeeScript which beautifully explains why the language became less used.

3. Perl:

Perl, a smart, dynamic programming language developed in 1987, has been well-liked, mostly among devs who work in companies like Facebook. Perl is famous for its flexible syntax, powerful regular expression support, and the use of modules containing rich APIs that made it a common choice for a variety of tasks including text processing, system administration, and web. While Perl though was one of the first interpreted languages which provided powerful libraries, it began to lose popularity with the appearance of newer rivals like Python and Ruby. The newer languages presented with modern features, cleaner syntax, and more robust frameworks making developers see them as much better and more attractive options. Additionally, Perl's reputation for write-only code and its cryptic syntax further reduced its usage as programmers started to use simpler languages and more expressive languages.

4. Lua:

Lua was known for its minimalistic and flexible nature, which quickly earned it a favor among software developers for use in gaming and web server programming. The simplicity, compatibility, and unmissable nature of Lua make it an ideal option for game development, especially in the video games industry. Lua, in addition, was employed in the production of one of the most played games in the world, Angry Birds, demonstrating its strength and versatility in the gaming scene. Yet, still, it is worth noting that in the face of its victories, Lua has experienced difficulties in its relevance preservation across time. The coming of R in the market was a great setback to Lua as most developers used R because the code it adopts is better known and more popular. Thus, Lua has since been used mainly in non-game contexts. Moreover, the absence of native support for some programming paradigms (such as object-oriented programming) reduced its options in the context of software development.

5. Rust:

Rust, which was the idea to substitute for C/C++ and other traditional languages, has become a popular programming language by itself. Taking memory safety, zero-cost abstractions, and fearless concurrency into account, Rust became a reasonable choice for systems programming, mainly in the applications of high performance. Besides, the other issue that was raised was that Rust was said to be hard to grasp and its syntax was unclear. Then, there appeared the ownership model which was rather difficult to understand.

Being acquainted with more established languages like C/C++, the developers found the technical compiler checks and the borrow checker in Rust difficult to deal with, which in turn, the frustration and resistance to adoption. In addition to that, Rust's under-development of libraries and frameworks put it behind its predecessors, and this made it rarely adopted in some domains. Even though Rust is a language that has a bright future and a huge community that is engaged in its development, its complexities and limitations have influenced its gradual decline in popularity these days.

Conclusion

Although the preceding programming languages may have held high popularity and success in the past, they actually have been outdated in the face of the current evolving technological trends and more advanced alternatives. The most promising developers should focus on acquiring knowledge of modern languages that are relevant and comply with the latest industry standards and have rich functionality and performance.