6 less popular programming languages in common use

If someone asks us to list down all the programming languages we know, we would start with something like Python, Javascript, Java, .NET, Go, and end up with something like Cobol, Pascal, Basic, covering a lot of the popular languages. This list might however miss out on some great languages in common use which are not commonly talked about, a few of which I intend to cover in this article.

1. Lisp & Clojure

Lisp is a family of programming languages, originally developed in 1958 and hence the second oldest high-level programming language still in common use. Few companies like Boeing (uses Allegro Common Lsip in the onboard network system of Boeing 747 and 777 aircraft), Nasa, Grammarly, Postresql still use Lisp in production.

Clojure is a dialect of Lisp. Clojure treats code as data and has a Lisp macro system. It is being used extensively for processing large volumes of data. It is very well suited to data mining/commercial-AI and large scale predictions. Clojure’s concurrency story really helps in these data heavy domains where parallel processing is simply the only answer. Clojusre is used in many popular companies Accenture, GO-JEK, CircleCI, NuBank, SoundCloud, Walmart and many other.

2. Fotran

Fotran may not be less known name but the fact that is still being largely used might be a less known fact. It is the oldest high level programming language in common use. Fortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing. Fortran is often faster than C and that is is why numerical libraries are still written in Fortran. Fortran code is used in critical software systems like weather prediction, hurricane or storm surge prediction, traffic monitoring, astrophysical modeling of stars and galaxies, analysis of scientific data, etc.

3. Rust

Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency. It is syntactically similar to C++ and offers mechanisms for low level memory management in additional various other high level features as well as advantages over C++. Rust is still not yet very popular for various reasons such as missing supports tools, libraries, ecosystem, smaller developer community, lower learning curve, lack of active maintenance, etc. but highly loved among people who explored Rust according to a Stackoverflow survey.

4. Elixir/ Erlang

Erlang is a programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability but not so popular due to reasons similar to that with Rust such as its lack of support tools like frameworks, toolkits, etc. and community support compared to languages such as Java, c++. Nerverthless it’s used in some top companies such as Whatsapp, IBM Cloudant, Goldman Sachs, etc.

Elixir is a functional, concurrent, general-purpose programming language that runs on the BEAM virtual machine which is also used to implement the Erlang programming language. Elixir has been gaining popularity as an enterprise-level software in telecom, banking, e-commerce, instant message and IoT and is being used in many famous companies such as Pinterest, Discord, Adobe, Motorolla, etc.

5. Dart

Dart is a programming language designed for client development, such as for the web and mobile apps. Dart is popular among mobile developer community, thanks to Flutter. Flutter is an Open-Source UI SDK developed by Google. It allows the development of iOS/Android apps and uses Dart as the programming language. Though Dart is getting more momentum due to the increasing popularity of Flutter, it is yet to be popular outside the mobile dev community and outside the purpose of Flutter app development.

6. WebAssembly

WebAssembly is an open standard that allows the execution of binary code on the web. It lets developers bring the performance of languages like C, C++, and Rust to the web development area. This technology is commonly used to perform demanding operations in the browser. It is 1.15–1.67 times faster than JavaScript on Google Chrome on a desktop. It first appeared only in 2017 and is gaining popularity but as of 2022, it is popular not more than 5% of the developer community only.

Do let me know in comments what are other programming languages that I missed out in this list.