The future belongs to IT. This statement is hardly surprising nowadays. The Tech industry is progressing day by day, and magnificent novelties are being implemented in our daily lives. The same goes for the programming world. As technology is getting more sophisticated, new programming languages are being developed. However, some legacy programming languages still cannot be replaced and are still high in demand. This list will probably be familiar to you if you are an experienced programmer. If you are a tech newbie, read on to explore some classic programming material.
C is one of the oldest programming languages. It is considered the mother of all languages and the core of any machine. C contains many data types and operators, which gives you a comprehensive platform for many different kinds of operations. It is highly flexible, meaning that it lets you run your code on any machine without complications. Also, It has various built-in functions that are exceptionally helpful when setting up a program. Apart from this, the structure-based model makes testing and maintenance much more effortless. It seems like a whole package, wouldn’t you agree?
Ada was initially developed in the early 1980s; since then, it has been refined and enhanced following the advancement of technology. Ada is multi-faced. It has been widely used in industries that pride themselves in high integrity, safety and high security, such as aircraft avionics, medical devices, railroad systems or traffic control. Ada’s benefits include its simple syntax, structured controlled statements, strong type checking, flexible data composition facilities, code modularization subprograms and a unique mechanism for handling unexpected run-time conditions.
Delphi is an object-oriented programming language. It includes a code editor, a visual designer, an integrated debugger and a source code control component. Even though Delphi was developed a good while ago, it still has a considerable user base due to its convenience and flexibility. The benefits of using this legacy language are the following: clear syntax – making the code easily readable, support for SQL databases, minimal maintenance needed, an opportunity to develop any application swiftly and a single codebase for all platforms.
Next on the list, we have Fortran – a high-quality legacy programming language still standing strong today due to its convenience for numeric and scientific computing. It supports Generic and structured programming and Array and Modular programming. Fortran is highly optimized for vectorization, is easy to understand, fast and highly opportune for large scale simulation of physical systems.
The last name on our list is Cobol. Yet another extraordinary programming language, which is mainly used for solving business problems and many data processing issues. Cobol is advantageous because it’s a self-documenting language, and it can handle massive data processing. It is convenient as the bugs can be easily eliminated due to its effective error message system and because all instructions can be coded in simple English words.
As you can see, even though modern programming languages are currently reigning on the market, legacy programming languages still make the foundation of many software and AI-based techniques. It is usual for young programmers to lean towards new, popular languages and platforms, but it is equally important to explore the old classics, which made all the other novelties possible and continue to stay prevalent in the IT industry.