7 Programming Languages That Finally Ended in 2025

RIP Code: 7 Programming Languages That Finally Died in 2025

Azeem Teli

Nov 1, 2025

You know what’s wild? Some developers in 2025 are still trying to convince everyone that Objective-C isn’t dead — like that one uncle who swears vinyl is coming back (okay, fine, it did, but your code won’t).

Every year, a few programming languages quietly slip into the digital graveyard — buried under piles of modern frameworks, forgotten GitHub repos, and memes that say “bro, just learn Rust.”

So grab your virtual flowers 🌼 — we’re visiting the programming language cemetery of 2025.

What Does It Mean When a Programming Language “Dies”? Before you start tweeting “no language ever dies, bro,” let’s clarify.

A programming language doesn’t literally vanish like your motivation after debugging for 3 hours.

It “dies” when:

Nobody’s hiring for it anymore (job boards are drier than desert logs). No new updates or libraries for years. Communities vanish — no Stack Overflow answers since 2018. It’s only used in legacy systems where one guy named Bob still maintains the codebase from his basement. Basically, a dead language = still technically alive, but socially ghosted.

1. Visual Basic .NET — Microsoft’s Forgotten Child VB.NET was once the cool kid who helped everyone make Windows apps easily. Fast-forward to 2025, and it’s like showing up to a JavaScript party with Internet Explorer energy.

Microsoft hasn’t been giving it much love, and .NET devs have moved to C# or even Python for scripting tasks. VB still exists, but let’s be honest — it’s on life support.

💡 Pro tip: If you’re still writing VB.NET, maybe check out my guide on Python Clean Code Best Practices. It’ll be your code’s rebirth.

2. Perl — The Camel That Finally Sat Down Once hailed as the “duct tape of the internet,” Perl powered early CGI scripts and sysadmin magic.

But now? It’s like that legendary band that should’ve stopped making albums after 2003.

Developers jumped ship to Python, Go, and Rust for cleaner syntax and modern tooling.

Perl 7 was supposed to be its comeback tour — but it never charted.

👉 Fun fact: Perl still ranks on the TIOBE Index, but mostly out of nostalgia (like Myspace in 2010).

3. Objective-C — Apple’s Ex Nobody Talks About Swift came along, looking all shiny and optimized, and Objective-C has been crying in Xcode ever since.

If you still use Objective-C in 2025, you’re probably maintaining an ancient iOS app for a bank that refuses to update.

Developers moved on — faster compile times, safer syntax, and fewer semicolons to rage at.

It’s not “dead” dead… but it’s definitely in hospice care.

4. COBOL — The Zombie That Refuses to Die COBOL is technically still alive — like your grandma’s flip phone that refuses to die.

It’s still running billions in banking systems (yes, billions 💰). But here’s the deal:

Nobody under 50 wants to maintain it. The syntax feels like writing essays instead of code. Modern devs treat it like ancient runes. So COBOL’s not gone — it’s just living out its retirement quietly in mainframes, sipping digital tea.

5. Flash / ActionScript — Adobe’s Fallen Hero Gone but never forgotten (well, kinda forgotten).

Adobe officially pulled the plug on Flash in 2020, and by 2025, ActionScript devs are mostly in therapy.

If you grew up coding Flash games — salute. You built childhoods. But HTML5, JS, and WebGL have long taken over.

6. CoffeeScript — When JavaScript Got Its Own Knockoff CoffeeScript was meant to simplify JS — but ended up confusing everyone.

Once ES6 arrived, CoffeeScript became that one meme of “Thanks, Grandpa, but we have ES6 at home.”

It’s not you, CoffeeScript. It’s just… JavaScript evolved. 💔

7. Haskell — The Philosopher Nobody Understood Haskell devs are the monks of programming — pure, functional, and perpetually explaining monads.

But mainstream adoption? Nah. The world moved toward practicality: TypeScript, Go, Python.

Haskell remains alive in academia, but in the wild? Extinct species. 🦕

Why Some Languages Die (and Others Thrive) Here’s the spicy truth 🔥 — programming languages die not because they fail, but because developers evolve faster than ecosystems.

A few reasons why some languages fall off the map:

Poor community support — without Stack Overflow answers, we panic. No new libraries or frameworks — you can’t build modern apps on fossils. Corporate neglect — if Google or Microsoft stops funding, goodbye updates. Hard learning curves — devs don’t have time to “discover the beauty” of your 300-page functional syntax book. Want a living example of how to future-proof your stack? Check out Polars vs Pandas: DataFrame Speed Comparison. Python keeps evolving — and that’s why it thrives.

Bonus: Signs Your Favorite Language Might Be Next Your subreddit hasn’t seen a post in months. Every tutorial you find is from 2017. You can’t install half the dependencies anymore. The “official docs” domain has expired. 😬 If that sounds familiar, it might be time to switch teams. Try building your next project in Python — and if you need help cleaning your data, my Data Cleaning Pipeline in Python guide has you covered.

Conclusion Every “dead” programming language once changed the world — and that’s beautiful.

But technology doesn’t wait. The languages we cling to today might be ghosts tomorrow.

If this article made you laugh, think, or cry for your old codebase —

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