What do you think of this article by Jeff Cogswell? The article posits that 5 popular languages are dying and will shortly cease to be used in any significant way. The languages are
- Perl
- Ruby
- Visual Basic.Net
- Adobe Flash/Air/Action Script
- Delphi Object Pascal
Some of those are pretty non-controversial. Most everyone agrees that Flash, and Object Pascal are dying or dead. One could make an arguable case that Visual Basic has also run its course.
But what about Perl and Ruby? I haven’t written in Perl for ages but lots of people I know consider it their go to language and claim it’s much preferable to, say, Python. I’d be hard put to say it’s dying but Gogswell makes a pretty persuasive case that its time has come and gone.
That leaves Ruby. I’ve never used Ruby so I can’t comment intelligently about it but lots of people I respect are devotees. To me, this is the most dubious candidate to be dying.
What do you think? If you use or have used any of these languages, leave a comment with your wisdom.