The processes involved in functioning of a website can be divided into 2 parts – The frontend and the backend.
Where frontend refers to client side interface i.e. the webpages a user interacts with, the backend refers to server side processes. Example :- data stored, structure of the website etc.
Read more about what backend and frontend are from Who is a full stack developer ?
While the standard languages used for creating the frontend of a website are HTML, CSS and JavaScript along with some frameworks like angular.js and react, there is a variety of options for creating the backend of a website.
And in this post we’ll be seeing top 5 best programming languages to build backend of websites.
5 best programming languages for backend
1. JavaScript
Javascript is what comes in everybody’s mind when talking about web development. As we already know it is used to create the frontend of a website. Hence you won’t have to learn another language for creating the backend. More than that, it is also very easy to learn language having a lot of community support
Every browser has a engine which could understand javascript on it. Most famous is the V8 engine by google. This is why running javascript on a browser doesn’t require any external installations.
But to run javascript on a computer, we need to install some a runtime environment. Like node.js. Node.js also provides several ways of connection with databases like MySQL and MongoDB and many more features
One other great thing about Node.js is that it runs javascript in an asynchronous way. Which means it doesn’t wait for one piece of code to run, and instead runs any program next to it (if any). This makes it ideal for a dynamically changing site.
Some of the popular websites created using javascript are :
- ebay.
2. Python
Python is one of the most versatile programming languages of all time. And one of the fields where python is in high demand is web development. Python along with some frameworks like Django and flask makes your workflow really fast and efficient.
Since python is already the preferred language for machine learning, it also provides a lot of libraries to build an even more intelligent website.
Python of course has its own advantages too, like its easy to understand syntax, portability, GUI suppost etc.
Some of the popular websites build with python are
3. PHP
PHP is one of the most easiest and efficient programming languages for backend development. Its workflow is very seamless and very basic. Doing simple tasks like connecting to MySQL, MongoDB databases is also very seamless in it.
While many might argue that PHP IS A DEAD LANGUAGE, I think its just a false statement ! A great amount of websites have been created using php since it was created.
Even facebook still uses php. Also very popular CMS’s like wordpress, and joomla are based on it.
Some of the most popular php backend framworks are:
- Laravel
- Symfony
- CodeIgniter
4. Java
According to wikipedia, java is the most popular programming languages used for making frontend among the the most popular websites.
Java is platform independent which means it can run on any kind of device.
It supports multithreading, which means it can execute two processes at the same time, hence utilize the entire memory of a device.
Some of the frameworks that can be used for backend development in java are – Spring, Struts, Grails.
5. Golang
Developed by google itself, golang or simply go, is an easy to use in – demand programming language for backend development, as of today. It is also considered one of the most fastest programming languages.
Its syntax is very similar to that of C.
Although it is a relatively new language, it has emerged very quickly, with a lot of community support.
Some other features Go consists of are : package management, powerful standard library, high-performance, fast garbage collection
All these things make it very suitable for large projects. Dropbox, SoundCloud, Dailymotion are made with go
Some of the frameworks backend frameworks of go are : – beego, echo, revel.
Conclusion
At last, I would like to conclude that it all comes down to your preference. Use what you are comfortable with. And I also think backend development is a field where there is no one best programming language. Like in the case of machine learning, where python is usually considered the best.
Any ways, you can try each one out and see which one suits you. You can even use combination of all these programming languages to create your backend. This is what some of the biggest websites do.
In fact technologies are very often changing, specially in this field. So its the best to keep yourself up to date and keep testing out what’s new.