Surely, all of you use social media apps. Every time you click on a video, scroll through your feed and perhaps search for something, it displays the corresponding information on your screen. These applications provide an excellent user experience. But have you ever wondered how this is achieved?
The answer to this question is the backend of the application. And what do you think makes the user experience so seamless? That’s correct, it’s the underlying languages used to develop such robust backend systems.
Backend Development includes the usage of many languages and frameworks. These languages facilitate the development of robust systems for web applications. The coming section covers the Best Backend Languages used by developers across the world.
But first, have a look at what backend development is all about.
What Is Backend Development?
Web development activities at the back end of programs are referred to as back end development. Back-end development covers server-side web application logic and integration and activities, like writing APIs, creating libraries, and working with system components instead of frontend development, which focuses on customer-facing services and programs. Backend developers build code that allows a database and an application to communicate with one another. Backend developers take care of and maintain the backend of a website, including databases, servers, and apps, and they control what you don't see.
Now that you know what Backend Development is, look at the best backend languages in the market today.
[Related reading: How to Become a Backend Developer?]
Best Backend Languages
Here are some of the most popular and widely used backend languages:
- JavaScript
- Python
- Java
- Ruby
- PHP
- C#
- Perl
JavaScript
- Because it can be used for both frontend and backend development, JavaScript is a popular programming language.
- Based on many historical patterns and statistics, it can be concluded that the popularity of Node.js has boosted the use of JavaScript as a backend language for web development.
- Meanwhile, the language offers several noteworthy features for backend development, including Lightweight Scripting, Dynamic Typing, Interpreted, Object-Oriented programming support, Client-Side Validation, and a large community.
- Some commonly used backend frameworks of JavaScript include NodeJS, Express, and MeteorJS, among others.
Python
- Python makes it easy to engage in modern programming tactics.
- Python comes with several sophisticated libraries that contain a large quantity of pre-written code. As a result, engineers don't have to write code from scratch, which reduces development time.
- Python is an excellent choice for backend development because of this.
- Here are a few reasons why businesses and organizations use Python for backend development:
- Uses Object-Oriented Programming
- Ease in understanding the code
- Versatility
- Wide range of frameworks
- Small learning curve
Python frameworks for backend development include Django and Flask.
Java
- The object-oriented programming language is widely utilized in the construction of enterprise-scale online applications, android apps, desktop apps, scientific apps, and so on.
- Java offers multithreading, which allows two or more threads to run simultaneously to maximize CPU utilization.
- Platform-independent, follows OOP concepts, extensive open-source libraries, automatic memory allocation & garbage collection, portability, and so on are some of Java's other advantages.
- Spring, Struts, and Grails are some of the most popular Java frameworks for backend development.
Ruby
- Ruby is one of the popular languages used. It's the basis for frameworks like ruby on rails. It has an expressive and easy-to-understand syntax. Provides more than 60000 libraries, has its own definite set of keywords, and is a dynamically typed language.
- According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Ruby is the 14th most popular programming language in the world, with 7.1 percent of respondents being Ruby on Rails engineers.
- Rails is a Ruby-based web development framework that was introduced 9 years after Ruby's initial release. It was intended to make web app programming easier and assist in creating websites of any complexity. Ruby's major purpose is to make it simple to construct new high-performance web projects.
PHP
- PHP, short for Hypertext Preprocessor, is an open-source server-side scripting language specifically designed for web development.
- PHP does not require a compiler and includes features such as cross-platform compatibility, OOPs, support for different standard databases such as MySQL, SQLite, and others, as well as a large community of users.
- Top PHP frameworks include Laravel, CodeIgniter etc.
C#
- C-Sharp is one of the most widely used languages for creating system backends. It's because of its incredible features, such as Windows server automation. Apart from that, it's fantastic because it runs codes quite quickly. It can also be used to create CLI applications and game creation.
- Some key features of C# include cross-platform compatibility, garbage data, and values collection, and object-oriented programming.
- Some widely used C# frameworks for backend development are ASP.NET Core and .NET MVC.
Perl
- Perl (Practical Extension and Reporting Language) is a multipurpose programming language originally designed for text manipulation. Still, it is used for a broad spectrum of tasks, including system administration, network programming, web development, GUI construction, and more.
- Perl can handle encrypted Web data, including e-commerce transactions. It can be embedded into web servers to speed up processing by as much as 2000%.
- Some commonly used Perl frameworks include Jiffy, Gantry, Dancer, and Catalyst, among others.
Although several languages fall in the best backend languages list, the ones mentioned top the charts.
Next Steps
Hope that this ‘Best Backend Languages’ tutorial gave you an insight into what the developers prefer for backend development. If you wish to learn these programming languages and maybe work as a developer, course certification will be helpful.
Learn key skills including MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js (“MEAN”), as well as GIT, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, in our Full Stack Web Developer - MEAN Stack Master's program.
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FAQs
1. What is the most popular backend language?
JavaScript is the most popular backend language in 2024. It is used by over 97% of websites, and it is also the language of choice for many popular frameworks, such as Node.js and Express.js.
2. What is the best backend language for beginners?
JavaScript, Python, and PHP are all good choices for backend development for beginners. They are all relatively easy to learn and have a large and active community of developers.
3. What is the most secure backend language?
Java is the most secure backend language. It has a long history of security research and development, and it has several features that make it difficult to exploit, such as its sandboxing model and garbage collection.
4. What is the fastest backend language?
Go is generally considered to be the fastest backend language. It is designed to be efficient and scalable, and it has a number of features that make it well-suited for high-performance applications.
5. What is the most versatile backend language?
JavaScript is generally considered to be the most versatile backend language. It is used to develop web applications to mobile applications to serverless applications.
6. Can we use the same language for both frontend and backend development?
Yes, using JavaScript. With Node.js for the backend and frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular for the frontend, developers can work in a full-stack JavaScript environment.
