To have a keen sense of the pulse we follow the ranking of programming languages that change every decade conforming to their popularity and market demand for labour among programmers. They’re required to be up to date with the latest trends and criteria of programming languages. The majority of tech people are focusing on the most well-established languages such as Java, C#, C++, Python. However, there are hundreds of less popular programming languages available throughout the entire world, which were invented for a particular purpose. In spite of being efficient and elegant, they lack attention that they deserve and remain in the background.
For sure these languages do have useful features that are unknown or underappreciated by developers. With a view to fully understand the benefits and drawbacks of such abandoned technologies, let’s place under close scrutiny the most promising ones.
D Programming Language
One of the most underrated languages is D lang released in 2001. D is a powerful high-level programming language, that was designed for general purpose systems and applications. D is able to compile directly to native and efficient machine code and was intended for C/C++ developers. Moreover, D was designed for developers who use these technologies on a widescale basis and aim to increase the processing speed.
Why is D language useful today?
It is thought that D was invented to complement C and C++ languages. Lots of difficulties in coding that C developers had, were solved by C++ language. Namely, being efficient and powerful technologies per se, С/С++ were not designed for these days’ information-oriented society, whose needs have changed. Modern view and the latest methods were reflected in D language, which accumulated decades of expertise.
D unique advantages over other languages
First of all, D language is portable through compilers, machines, and different OS. Secondly, having its own built-in testing and verification abilities, D minimises common mistakes resulting from syntax errors. Thirdly, It supports Unicode and is compatible with C binary interface. What is more, D is able to access low-level programming. And last but not least, it is easy to learn for C++ programmers.
How D features could help developers in their everyday work?
Robustness of D contributes greatly to error-handling in large code volumes. D does not allow a fair quantity of bugs written in C/C++ arise from uninitiated variables and object members. Moreover, it helps to avoid buffer overflow. Execution time of D language is extremely fast (due to complex compile-time conditions). Taking into consideration Final Switch feature and simple syntax parsing, D is really efficient and easy to work with.
Putting in a nutshell
D language is able to provide effective practical solutions to everyday issues of C/C++ developers. Low popularity makes D one of the most underappreciated programming languages.
Ruby Language
Ruby is a general-purpose, purely object-oriented, dynamic programming language developed in the 1990s. It is an open source language well known for its simplicity in reading and coding. There are many similarities between Ruby syntax and other programming languages, such as Java, JavaScript, С, Python, Perl. So any programmer is able to easily learn Ruby.
Why is Ruby useful today?
The main goal of this language development was to create a functional buffer between human written code and the underlying machine code. Ruby is mostly useful for developing applications with web architecture. Web applications in this language are created quickly and require fewer developer’s efforts compared to other technologies.
It has its own web application framework called Ruby on Rails, which is surrounded by a large developer community. Programmers have access to the powerful RubyGems, which offers a standard format for Ruby programs and libraries.
How Ruby features could help developers in their everyday work?
This open source language is known for its flexibility. It allows a developer to easily alter, remove, add, or redefine code fragments. Ruby applies the DRY (Don’t repeat yourself) principle. As Ruby is an interpreted language, its implementations are able to execute instructions directly, and do not require previous compiling into machine code.
Among the advantages of this free language is its focus on convention rather than configuration. So the user does not have to spend time on configuration of numerous files. Actually, Ruby shortens the development time. Moreover, Ruby has its own memory management ability, since it applies the garbage collection. And finally, the code written in this language has less quantity of lines of code.
Putting in a nutshell
In spite of being easy to understand and all the other advantages, Ruby still remains among the most underrated technologies nowadays. How comes it?
First of all, Ruby has some alternatives such as Python, PHP, and Java that are widely recognized and cannot be overtopped with ease. What is more, some website hosts simply don’t support Ruby language. On top of that there are some debugging difficulties with this language. Some experts state that interpreted scripting languages like Ruby lack running speed in general.
Nim Language
Nim is a statically typed language like C/C++, Java and Go. One more similar feature between Nim and C language is memory-efficiency. According to Nim experts, it is very easy to learn but compiles to binaries that execute just as fast as C language.
Why is Nim useful today?
Actually, the main goal of Nim developers was to create a language as simple to code as Python, as fast as C and able to create Python extension modules with ease. So, Nim offers programmers both speed and ease of use being a great mix of features.
How Nim features could help developers in their everyday work?
Actually, before being compiled into machine code Nim code is translated to optimized C/C++ (It also supports other backends, e.g. JavaScript). A customizable memory management ability of this programming language is inspired by C++ as well. Nim is known for its readability. Prime reason that some developers still chose Nim is a large number of templates and macros. It means that this language helps to save coding time.
In short
Nim encapsulates a range of useful features, but remains underrated. Its limitedness and poor implementation ability plays an integral role herein.
Conclusion
The IT world is constantly renovating. The popularity of older languages declines sooner or later. But still developers can derive profit from learning new or even less popular languages. The developers of the underrated technologies had an exact intention to satisfy the demand for a specific niche.
Any of the technologies mentioned before has its fanbase of programmers who make the best use of the opportunities the language provides. For them the benefits of these technologies outweigh their drawbacks despite the lack of wide acceptance and recognition. Probably, if the corporations give D, Ruby and Nim a second glance, they will become more popular in the near future.