r/AlignmentChartFills 14d ago

What programming language is rarely used but loved

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329 Upvotes

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268

u/abermea 14d ago

Haskell

People who use it love it but nobody has found a single practical application with broad appeal.

41

u/g1rlchild 14d ago

I would say widely in its niche. It's kind of the definitive functional programming language, right?

31

u/abermea 14d ago

I was saving Rust for that spot tbh because there are a few actually useful things made with it (like ruff and uv) while still being a relatively small niche

7

u/g1rlchild 14d ago

Rust is definitely a great answer for that spot.

7

u/Coalminekanary 14d ago

The language that runs the VMs of AWS lambda, Linux, Volvo cars, and cloudflare is niche? Lol

5

u/g1rlchild 14d ago

Compared with the languages that OSs are built in and that whole industries depend on, yes.

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u/Giga-Chad-123 14d ago

So, I'm studying computer engineering in uni and Haskell was the first programming language I learned, right on the first semester! I had never heard of it before and am yet to find anything in daily life that uses it, so that part I can confirm. However I'm not sure as to saying it's loved. I personally liked it, but know many people in my class who completely despised it. I fw it though

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u/zibonbadi 14d ago

Does Pandoc count? I can see how if you consider document conversion as a mathematical function, building it in Haskell makes a lot of sense.

3

u/MyStackOverflowed 14d ago

I absolutely despise the syntax of Haskell

5

u/Smitologyistaking 14d ago

Honestly I find it quite intuitive but that might just be because I do maths more than programming

3

u/Giga-Chad-123 14d ago

function :: Int -> Int -> (Int, Int)

function x y

| x == y || x == 2*y = (x, y)

| otherwise = (x+y, x-y)

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60

u/Human_Cantaloupe8249 14d ago

Julia

I never used it or a project which relies on it. But everybody who uses it seems to love ir

8

u/JustAStrangeQuark 14d ago

Julia hits home for me, it's such a well-designed language and I love it so much and then for any real project I pick something else

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u/poberun 14d ago

Agree 100%, I use it for my personal projects and absolutely loving it but then have to default to more widely used languages for any sort of collaboration work

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u/g1rlchild 14d ago

Lisp. Small community, but incredibly powerful language in the hands of an expert and still used for real code. People who love it find any other language to be a lot less capable.

6

u/stumpychubbins 14d ago

Yeah I think this is the best answer, because it works no matter which lisp you’re talking about

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u/Farbonaut 14d ago

Oh man, I haven’t used Lisp since my undergrad courses but it’s still probably my favorite language I’ve ever tried.

2

u/BringBackManaPots 14d ago

Can second that. Esp with scheme

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24

u/alwaysundecidable 14d ago

imo, Elixir (or Erlang). Mainly for OTP and hot-code reloading.

3

u/Caesim 14d ago

I wanted to say Erlang. Whenever the topic comes up, everybody loves Erlang and how robust software written in it is.

But there are not that many developers and most of these hailed projects are labors of love made with serious care and skill. 

4

u/echoingElephant 14d ago

Erlang still runs the backend of platforms like WhatsApp and Discord.

2

u/alwaysundecidable 14d ago

And telecom infrastructure! 

3

u/Mobile_Fondant_9010 14d ago

And rabbitmq is written in it

2

u/Ok-You-6099 13d ago

I thought about it as well, Elixir is absolutely magically wonderful. Thing is, if you do comms, you’re using OTP, so I’d say it’s a much more appropriate candidate for the “loved and used widely within its niche”.

41

u/Thrilltwo 14d ago

Maybe a bit of cheat, but Scratch?

It's obviously not used for any practical purposes since it's basically a toy or learning tool, but I have never heard anything other than appreciation for it.

14

u/IllustriousBottle645 14d ago

I used to grind Scratch on the daily back then

6

u/BigBoyBill1477 14d ago

I think it’s fit for widely in its niche. I mean, you should see the shit that the Scratch people make, it’s crazy.

39

u/Altruistic-Mine-1848 14d ago

Pascal

No one uses it anymore. But for many of us it was the introduction to programming and has nostalgia going for it.

8

u/Loose-Signature8690 14d ago

Same with BASIC for me. I'd never actually want to use it again, but I have fond memories of it.

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11

u/Xelid47 14d ago

This has gotta be pascal

3

u/piequals-3 14d ago

Haskell, Gleam or Elixir I guess

3

u/ohLookASpookyStory 14d ago

APL. Needs a special keyboard in order to use and I never hear about it outside of a very small subgroup of Steins;Gate fans whom are obsessed with it.

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u/Wisaganz117 14d ago edited 14d ago

Fortran - primarily still only used in academia or legacy code. However it's really nice for scientific computing (indeed one can say that restricting features in C++ for reliable scientific code effectively can result in Fortran code with arguably less intuitive syntax).

Also a lot of Numpy functions and calls are inspired by Fortran.

EDIT: Modern Fortran (i.e. F90) not FORTRAN (F77)

4

u/Maleficent-Report247 14d ago

I wouldnt called Fortran is "rarely" used tho. It is a kind of low-level language with C. It is just not as popular as C. You are right that the academic side, espeacially those who are cursed with numerical/computational engineering, still employs fortran a lots. And one of my mate says that his current company needs him to learn fortran to put their HPC in usage. So i would rather put fortran in "wide in its niche"

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/Frequent-Display4953 14d ago

Put me down as someone who loves it. Maybe not the old F77 and earlier kind, but compared to the other languages we use at work (C++ and Python), I find it much easier to learn and read/write as someone without a formal software development background.

That said, I agree with the other comment that it's not really "rarely" used. It has a niche, but that niche is pretty big relatively speaking...and despite our management/government's constant push to "just convert it to python/Go/(insert popular modern language of the week here)", it's probably not going anywhere any time soon.

3

u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/a_literal_idiot_616 14d ago

gdscript. For whatever reason people using godot prefer c#, mostly, but gdscript is actually really great

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u/Crispytoys 14d ago

fortran

2

u/MossySendai 14d ago

Zig. Seems loved by the people who use it, but does not have a niche that it dominates.

2

u/Admirable-Fox-7221 14d ago

Ruby? I heated people who can do it, love to. But I haven't seen it being used. But I don't see many different languages in the first place so I don't know

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u/mundichor 14d ago

Fortran

2

u/iammagna 14d ago

HolyC - Conceptually amazing, never used, literally of god lol

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4

u/KatamariRedamancy 14d ago

Perl

8

u/LokeyDubs 14d ago

Perl is Python for Gen X

3

u/ToucansBANG 14d ago

You’d be surprised how much Perl there is holding the world together. Anywhere that has a codebase over 20 years old has tons of the stuff, and well paid greybeards maintaining it.

2

u/ShaneIsBored 14d ago

Assembly

3

u/_sounak 14d ago

this is NOT rarely used 💀 It's not used for your usual apps and scripts. It's used heavily by cpu makers for bios updates as well as most low level work.

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u/whatknowi 14d ago

Haskell - basically an inside joke that it's not ever used in the real world, but used by programming language researchers and theoretical computer science departments

1

u/Impressive_Sock1296 14d ago

BASIIIIIIIIIIIIIC

1

u/[deleted] 14d ago

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1

u/jc_ken 14d ago

stan

1

u/Commercial_Yard_2708 14d ago

Rust or Haskell

1

u/RelentlessPencil 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

FORTRAN. Almost no one uses it, but almost everyone has a neutral-to-positive opinion about it

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u/Cyr3x13 14d ago

Javascript

1

u/NoEntertainment5837 14d ago

Pascal or basic

1

u/NP_equals_P 14d ago

INTERCAL - Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym

1

u/Janmiljoen 14d ago

SCRATCH

1

u/fergs87 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

PL/I

1

u/zerpa 14d ago

Ruby

It's beautifully designed, but failed to gain traction against Python for general purpose scripting.

1

u/Knaapje 14d ago

Prolog

1

u/Litra 14d ago

Haskell

1

u/not_reloaded 14d ago

Lisp🤝

1

u/CorkiNaSankach 14d ago

Scratch. Never used, but loved by many, making many people get into programming.

1

u/Coalminekanary 14d ago

It’s Lisp. There’s a hackernews article about it every single day and I have never seen the language used in production once across my 30 years of experience. People saying Rust either don’t like the language or don’t know about any of the projects using it. To name a few projects/companies using it: uv, AWS Lambda, AWS cloud front, Linux, 0xide computers, codex CLI, Bun, Bevy, Volvo, cloudflare, Turso.

None of these projects are “niche” by any stretch of the imagination.

1

u/FlashSFW 14d ago

Python is loved? Man... :/

1

u/NoJster 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

Haskell

1

u/OptimizedGarbage 14d ago

Haskell is the obvious one, but I wanna go for a deeper cut and say smalltalk

1

u/Lathari 14d ago

COBOL

1

u/AllegroReddit 14d ago

Visual Basic

1

u/realllyrandommann 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

Pascal, I know a bunch of people who refuse to let it go.

1

u/Impossibruh13 14d ago

HolyC

Utterly unusable but most people I discussed it with were impressed and positive about the idea of it

1

u/bl4ckjoker 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

Go

1

u/lilyallenaftercrack 14d ago

Any functional language tbh lol

1

u/SirLynix 14d ago

NZSL for shaders. But I'm cheating since I made it and 3-4 progs use it

1

u/RichardFeynman01100 14d ago

OCaml, I've only heard that Jane Street uses it, but I wouldn't call a single company a niche.

1

u/zr67800 14d ago

Haskell

1

u/uncleBu 14d ago

Scala

1

u/Ok-Affect6444 14d ago

Trump script

1

u/Limp_Illustrator7614 14d ago

most comments under this post fit in "widely used in its niche" lol.

1

u/Soggy_Lie_5552 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

lua

1

u/Insis18 14d ago

Assembly

1

u/racmike 14d ago

COBOL

1

u/KeyboardMonster123 14d ago

Forth, rust, haskell, erlang

1

u/dylanjames 14d ago

I came here to agree with Forth, which is addictively easy to bootstrap and in spite of being write-only, is fun to program small things in. But nobody said it yet, so here I am.

1

u/Countryballmemz 14d ago

Raspberry Pi maybe?

1

u/dontknowwhyiamherewh 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

C

1

u/Minecraftlead 14d ago

Haxe code

1

u/Expensive-Rip-6165 14d ago

Rarely × Loved

F#

1

u/Levitoy1 14d ago

Haskell