Web development has been around for three decades and its evolution phase is still going on. Back in the days, there were only flat-text and static websites but now this industry has been revolutionized by much complex ones offering you to do just about anything online. Now a days, more and more applications are finding their ways to cloud with the help of web-based applications which can be used on any device powered by any possible operating system. Behind all this growth, lies the efforts of web developers from all around the world that code each piece of puzzle to make this technology better.
When talking about web development languages, people usually confuse HTML and CSS with programming languages. But in fact, these are just markup languages used to produce simple web pages. Meanwhile, web programming languages are much complicated and can produce anything imaginable.
Web Development Languages
Although there is a huge number of web development languages which can be opted but in this article, we are going to document our take on top 5 web development languages.
JavaScript
JavaScript (JS) is the most used language for web development. According to a survey, about 95% of the websites on internet use it directly or indirectly. One of the most important aspects of JS is that it can serve both of the server and client sides. Most of the modern-day browsers have a built in JavaScript engine which enables the fast processing of client-side scripts. JS doesn’t just make websites pretty; it also makes them highly functional. It’s also used to develop web servers, games, smart watch apps and software for quadcopters.
Popular Frameworks
- React JS
- Vue Js
- Angular JS
- Express JS
- Next JS
Python
In recent times, Python has gained huge popularity because of its flexibility with most of the platforms and its ease of use. It’s one of the easiest programming languages to learn and it has high applications in different sub fields of information technology (e.g. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Data Science). It is widely used in IT industry and even one of the global giants, Google also relies significantly on it. It has a huge collection of standard libraries which makes it very easy and efficient for developers. It offers comparatively better code readability and seamless integration with other languages.
Popular Frameworks
- Django
- Pyramid
- TurboGears
- Web2py
- CherryPy
Ruby
Ruby is a dynamic and open-source programming language focused on increasing the developers’ productivity. Its syntax is very elegant and easy to write/read. It’s widely used across the worlds for web development purposes and is recommended to beginners for getting started for web development because it can be easily learnt. Dynamic & duck typing, flexibility & scalability, automatic garbage collection, large standard library and custom dispatch behavior are some of the useful features that Ruby offers.
Popular Frameworks
- Ruby on Rails
- Camping
- Ramaze
- Goliath
- Hanami
PHP
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open-source scripting language created in 1994. It is basically a server-side language used to produce dynamic web applications. Popular web platforms such as Drupal, WordPress and Facebook are based on PHP. It’s an interpreted language and doesn’t require a compiler that’s why it can run on almost every operating system. It’s also supported by a huge number of third-party extensions such as MySQL, Apache and .NET enabling it to communicate with other platforms and services. It’s also very much secure because of various hash functions available to encrypt and secure users’ data. It’s supported by a huge ecosystem of community members providing multiple solutions and video tutorials for any possible error.
Popular Frameworks
- Laravel
- CodeIgniter
- Symfony
- CakePHP
- Phalcon
Java
Java is among the most mature and highly used programming languages because of the availability of its huge number of well-maintained libraries, frameworks, APIs, and IDEs. The advantage of using Java is that it works on “Write Once Run Anywhere” principle. (Which means the compiled Java code can be executed on any platform that supports Java without recompiling it.) With features like advanced authentication, cryptography, secure login mechanisms, digital signatures, ciphers, security policies, and access controls, Java is considered one of the most secure web development languages.
Popular Frameworks
- Spring
- Grails
- Struts
- Hibernate
- Play
