Web development is one of the most popular tasks assigned to developers. If you want to hire the best web engineers, you must pay attention to these languages.
Are static HTML site generators a good option for your business?
Web development is perhaps one of the most important responsibilities in technology, as well as one of the most visible and forward-looking. So it probably comes as no surprise to anyone, even those outside of technology, that web developers, especially those with extensive experience, skills, knowledge and a large portfolio, are in high demand.
To start at the beginning: Web development has been around since the 1990s, when the Internet was in its humble beginnings, and it's safe to say it will never go away. It has become a staple of our everyday lives in the several decades since those early years, as we all know very well.
However, these early-day sites are little more than an interesting footnote in history. If you took a look at an old website, assuming you could find one, you would probably laugh at how basic and outdated it looks.
It's certainly fair to say that the field and practice of web development has come a long way since then, as we all know well. Now, modern web design has evolved to become something much more complex, useful and engaging for audiences around the world. It's what we all hope for: dynamic, engaging, attractive, attractive and communicative tools.
Gone are the days of static, plain-text websites. In their place are these dynamic, interactive websites that can do just about anything – from automatic updates to menus and animated elements to ecommerce. Everyone uses the Internet and expects to be able to find their favorite tools, businesses, and happenings online.
And with the right web development skills, there's almost nothing that your in-house developers or the developers you hire from an outsourced web development company can't create.
No matter where you source your web developers from, it's important that they have the skills needed to get the job done. And that means having the right programming languages that allow them to design and build the best websites for the job at hand. Today, the Internet is full of engaging websites and web apps, and to stand out in a highly saturated space, you must be able to offer the best of the best.
But what programming languages do your developers need to know to create modern, dynamic, functional, and engaging websites and web products – ones that will actually make you and your business shine and gain more visitors and customers?
Let's take a look at the 7 best programming languages for attracting and useful websites, web pages, and web applications, along with some tools you must understand to fully use these programming languages.
#1HTML/CSS
We'll start with the obvious programming language. Why? Because you won't get very far building custom websites without knowing the mother of all web programming languages. With the combination of HTML and CSS, you can do a lot. However, it's important to be aware that you'll need help from other programming languages to create those dynamic, engaging websites and web pages that we're so familiar with today.
Yes, it is true that these 2 markup languages, as they are called, are the basis for creating web pages for websites. But you shouldn't confuse HTML and CSS with other programming languages. In fact, they are quite different. These two markup languages, as they are called, are simply the basis for websites. And no matter how complicated the website is – if you view the page source code, you will certainly see HTML and CSS tags in the code.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| Easy to learn and use, with clear syntax | Limited interactivity, requiring the use of additional languages such as JavaScript for dynamic content |
| Widely supported, with a large, active community | May be limited in terms of functionality and capabilities compared to full programming languages |
| Essential for creating and defining the structure and layout of web pages | Requires the use of additional languages such as JavaScript for interactivity and dynamic content |
| Good for prototyping and development speed | Can be difficult to maintain and update, especially for large or complex websites |
| Integrates with other web technologies, such as JavaScript and PHP, to create dynamic and interactive web applications | Can result in verbose code, especially for complex or interactive websites |
As HTML/CSS are essentially the foundational languages for all web design, it is very important for web developers to have a solid understanding of these two languages. While you won't get very far by delivering everything your customer wants, you will have a foundation from which to build the rest of the site using a combination of additional web development languages.
#2 PHP
PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is a scripting language used on the backend (server side) to provide simple and dynamic websites and web applications. Many of the most popular website frameworks, like Wikipedia, Etsy, Pfizer, Drupal, WordPress, and even Facebook, use PHP.
PHP is an incredibly popular language for website design, in part because it is supported by a large number of third-party extensions, such as .NET, Apache, and MySQL. This support makes it possible to use PHP as a bridge between websites and other services. PHP can also communicate with other services such as LDAP, IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, HTTP, and COM (on Windows).
PHP is also very secure and fast, so it is a highly beneficial programming language for businesses. And because PHP is open source and free, it is readily available for any aspiring web developer to get started with. Of course, experienced developers also take advantage of this feature. PHP is also relatively easy to get started with, making it a great second step to HTML/CSS. And with plenty of simple documentation, your developers should be able to start using PHP quickly.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| Easy to learn and use, with clear syntax | Security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) |
| Widely supported, with a large, active community | Performance limitations compared to other languages such as Node.js |
| HTML integration for seamless web development | Inconsistent error handling and debugging support |
| Good for prototyping and development speed | Lack of standardization between different implementations, leading to compatibility issues |
| Dynamic typing can lead to more flexible and adaptable code | May result in slower performance for large or complex applications |
One of the best features of PHP is that it is not limited to HTML output. PHP can generate images, PDF files, text and even animations, all generated instantly.
Laravel
Laravel is a free, open-source, affordable, and robust PHP framework that follows the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern. It aims to support the development of web applications, simplifying and speeding up the web development process.
Laravel is easy to follow and understand, with expressive syntax. Additional features of the web development framework include:
- Fast Routing Engine
- Multiple ways to access relational databases
- Modular packaging system with dependency manager
- Multiple backends for caching and session storage
- Real-time event transmission
Symfony
Symfony is another PHP framework that includes reusable component libraries for the programming language. It is free and open source.
Symfony is a popular toolkit used for a wide variety of web applications and other PHP projects. Its goal is to speed up web development and maintenance and give developers more control over their own projects, as well as making the process easier and more efficient.
#3Python
Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn. It is also one of the most popular languages on the planet. It’s not just used for web development – it’s also applied to a wide range of software development projects. One of its main strengths is in the sphere of data science and analysis, but it has applications in countless projects.
With Python, you can integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) into your websites. These features will offer a number of advantages. For example, they will allow you to better understand customer behavior and even build systems that learn to monitor and understand customer conversations related to a product. As you can imagine, this makes it an excellent tool for increasing your appeal as a business.
And because Python is so adept at back-end web development, it is used for several massive services such as Spotify, Netflix, Intel, YouTube, NASA, and Instagram.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| Easy to learn and use, with clear syntax | Performance limitations compared to lower-level languages such as C++ |
| Large and active community providing extensive libraries and support | Dynamic typing can lead to runtime errors, making debugging difficult |
| Great for prototyping and development speed | May not be suitable for memory-intensive tasks or systems with high performance requirements |
| Wide range of applications including scientific computing, data analysis and web development | May be slower than other languages in certain cases, such as for large data sets |
| Highly readable and maintainable code | May be less efficient than other languages for certain tasks |
One of the most important aspects of Python is that it offers dynamic typing capabilities, which allows developers to create very large and complex websites – where content must constantly change – much easier than with statically typing languages. Ultimately, Python is an important programming language to have in your arsenal.
Django
Called “the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines,” Django is an extraordinarily popular, free, and open-source high-level Python web framework. It offers rapid development, security and efficiency and is updated frequently. Django is also highly scalable.
Django exists primarily to help developers build websites that incorporate data science and databases. Components are reusable, and by using the framework, developers can use much less code and substantially speed up development.
Some of the world's top companies and websites use Python and Django together, like Instagram, Nextdoor, and Mozilla.
Bottle
Flask is a lightweight microframework built and written in Python. As such, it allows for easier development of web applications. Just some of its notable features include URL routing, flexibility, and accessibility. It also has a very low learning curve, allowing both novice and experienced web developers to use the framework.
#4 JavaScript
You'll find JavaScript in just about any web developer's toolkit, thanks to its many attributes and the ways it powers websites and web applications.
While HTML is great for creating basic, static, flat web pages, JavaScript excels at making them modern, eye-catching, and interactive. For example, you can create a basic menu on a website with HTML and CSS. With JavaScript, however, you can animate this menu and even make it easier for users to navigate. So JavaScript is not just about making things pretty, it's also about making them highly functional. Many of the best features you find on websites exist because of JavaScript.
An important aspect of JavaScript is that it serves both the server and the client (also called backend and frontend). On the client side, JavaScript creates these interactive elements for site navigation and other modern features. On the server side, JavaScript includes several libraries and frameworks that can allow its developers to create numerous functionalities such as web applications and mobile applications.
JavaScript can also allow its developers to create web servers, presentations, games, smartwatch applications, and even software for quadcopters.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| Dynamic and versatile, allowing for a wide range of applications | Inconsistent browser support and compatibility issues |
| Client-side execution for faster page rendering and better user experience | Lack of standardization between different implementations, leading to compatibility issues |
| Widely supported, with a large, active community | Weak typing can lead to unexpected behavior, making debugging difficult |
| Integration with HTML and CSS for seamless web development | Security vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) |
| Interactivity, enabling a wide range of dynamic user interface elements | May be less performant than other languages, especially for large or complex applications |
As we mentioned, there are many frameworks and libraries that enhance the functionality and attributes of JavaScript. Here's a more detailed work-through of some of the most popular examples.
ReactJS
Although it is relatively new on the scene, React, maintained by Meta – formerly Facebook – is a staple in web development. The free and open-source JavaScript library is used to aid front-end development and has emerged as the most popular front-end development framework, despite actually being a library.
It can be applied in many ways, but most commonly, developers use it to build user interfaces (UI) based on UI components. With the help of the library, it is easy to quickly build dynamic and high-performance applications
React has a large developer community and numerous extensions for architectural support.
Angular JS
AngularJS is a popular JavaScript framework and toolkit that allows developers to extend the HTML vocabulary to use in their web application projects. Thanks to the framework, the code is more testable, maintainable, extensible and reusable. You also have the ability to make your code unique thanks to AngularJS.
Some of the features of AngularJS include data binding and impressive performance. It also offers controllers and works well with other libraries.
AngularJS should not be confused with Angular, a free and open-source web application framework based on TypeScript.
View
Called the “progressive” JavaScript framework, Vue is an open-source, model-view-viewmodel, front-end, progressive framework used to create user interfaces and single-page applications.
Vue is considered highly affordable, gradually adaptable, scalable and versatile and offers high performance. Depending on the use cases, it can function as a framework or a library. The rich ecosystem can scale between the two.
Vue allows developers to extend HTML thanks to HTML attributes or directives.
Typescript
No list of web development languages is complete without mentioning TypeScript. Developed and maintained by Microsoft, TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, created to address some of the limitations of the parent language. Mainly, it extends JavaScript by adding static typing option to the programming language.
TypeScript is free and open source and can be used for front-end and back-end development. Using the programming language, developers can create large-scale JavaScript applications.
Any existing JavaScript applications or programs also support TypeScript, and using Subset, developers can apply existing JavaScript code, libraries, and other tools aimed at the parent programming language. Additionally, TypeScript will run anywhere JavaScript is capable of running.
#5Java
Java is not only the most used language on the planet because of Android development, but also because of the number of well-maintained libraries, frameworks, APIs, and IDEs available for it.
There are several good reasons why so many developers turn to Java for the web. For example, Java supports multithreading, which means it can handle multiple users and threads simultaneously. Because of this, developers don't need to run multiple copies of the same code on a server. This provides much faster response time for websites.
Java is also scalable vertically and horizontally with minimal code changes. Furthermore, Java is seen as one of the most secure web-centric languages on the market. With features like advanced authentication, encryption, secure login mechanisms, digital signatures, ciphers, security policies, and access controls, it's a hard-to-beat language for developing secure, platform-independent web applications.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| Platform independent, allowing easy deployment across multiple operating systems | Slower performance compared to lower-level languages like C++ |
| Large, established community providing extensive libraries and support | Steep learning curve, especially for beginners |
| Strong security features, making it a popular choice for enterprise applications | Detailed syntax compared to other languages, making it less concise |
| Wide range of applications including desktop, mobile and web development | May result in larger file sizes compared to other languages |
| Strong type checking and error handling leading to more stable and secure code | May be less flexible than dynamically typed languages such as Python |
#6 Ruby
Ruby is an excellent programming language for web development. While it is best known for its associated framework, Ruby on Rails, it has many claims to fame in its own right. Scripting language is used in front-end and back-end web development
Ruby is general purpose, easy to use, open source, flexible, interpreted, easy to learn, robust, dynamically typed, object oriented, versatile, intuitive and can be applied to various web products from websites to web applications even and more. Its high-level syntax makes it particularly easy to use, as this language is very similar to English. It is often compared to the syntax of programming languages such as C++, Perl and Python.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| Dynamic and expressive, making it suitable for rapid prototyping and development | Slower performance compared to other languages such as C++ and Go |
| Easy to learn and use, with clear syntax | Limited support for concurrency and parallelism |
| Large, established community providing extensive libraries and support | Inconsistent error handling and debugging support |
| Good for rapid development, with a focus on readability and ease of maintenance | May be less performant than other languages, especially for large or complex applications |
| Dynamic typing can lead to more flexible and adaptable code | May be less safe than statically typed languages such as Java or Go |
Ruby has other applications beyond web development – data processing and DevOps, to name just a few – but this is by far its most popular use.
Ruby on the rails
It's almost impossible to discuss Ruby without mentioning one of the most popular web development frameworks in the world: Ruby on Rails, also known as RoR or simply Rails. The framework offers an abundance of libraries and features, such as readily available conventions and code generators that automatically build parts of the application.
RoR makes website creation easy. It allows for database updates, HTML template rendering, cloud storage, strong security protocols, and more.
In fact, Ruby on Rails isn't just a popular Ruby framework – it's one of the most popular web frameworks, period. Maybe that's why it has been used by many big companies such as Airbnb, Bloomberg, Shopify, SlideShare, Dribble, GitHub, Groupon and CrunchBase
Jekyll
Ruby on Rails is not the only tool you will find associated with the Ruby programming language. Jekyll is a simple static website generator that you can apply to a wide variety of websites, from personal projects to larger organizational sites. It allows developers to transform text on static websites.
Jekyll follows the following philosophy :
Jekyll does what you say – no more, no less. It doesn't try to mislead users by making bold assumptions, nor does it burden them with unnecessary complexity and configuration. Simply put, Jekyll gets out of your way and lets you focus on what really matters: your content.
Some website generators were even inspired by Jekyll, one of the most popular tools of its kind.
#7 Quick
This is a bonus when placed among the other programming languages on this list. After all, Swift is not generally considered a web development language. But although it is most commonly associated with the iOS/Apple ecosystem – that is, iOS app development – Swift, which was developed by Apple, is increasingly being applied to the web development sphere as well. This is especially true when used in conjunction with Swift-based web frameworks like Perfect and Vapor, which make your efforts more seamless.
Swift is modern, clean, easy to read and write, intuitive and simple to learn, with a concise and expressive syntax. It offers optimal performance and speed, strong security measures, and better readability. As an open source language, Swift is relatively young, but it is becoming an increasingly popular and sought-after language with a growing community.
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
| High performance, making it suitable for developing large and complex applications | Steep learning curve, especially for those unfamiliar with statically typed languages |
| Clear syntax, making it easy to read and maintain | Limited support for web development as it is mainly used to develop native iOS and macOS apps |
| Strong type checking and error handling leading to more stable and secure code | Smaller community compared to other languages such as Java and Python |
| Interoperability with Objective-C, allowing reuse of existing code and libraries | May be less flexible than dynamically typed languages such as Python |
| Good for developing native iOS and macOS apps, with access to a wide range of APIs and libraries | May be less expressive than other languages, especially for complex applications |
Conclusion
Although more languages can be used for web development, these 7 are an excellent starting point to begin your web development career. Once you've mastered HTML/CSS, PHP, Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, and Swift, you'll be ready to take on serious, advanced web development.
It's important to keep in mind, however, that the best programming languages for one project are not necessarily the right ones for another. Over the course of your programming career, you will find that one web development language is ideal for a particular initiative, while other languages are better suited for separate projects.
Your job, as a professional in the field, is to be able to select the best tools, including the best programming languages, to meet your objectives, in addition to producing exceptional products.
As with most technology spaces, web development is constantly evolving, as are the programming languages used within it. What is popular today may lose some of its appeal in a few years, just as a language that is still relatively unknown this year may well dominate the landscape next year.
Any web developer who wants to acquire knowledge and prominence in the area must continue to pay attention to trends, include the most popular programming languages in this sphere to grow in their career, as well as make the best websites and web products possible. .
Web Development Languages FAQ
What is the best language for web development?
Although there is no single best programming language for web development, it is generally HTML, CSS and JavaScript that form the basis of the structure of your website or web application, which means that these are the most necessary programming languages for you to use.
What languages are needed for web development?
The only programming languages that are absolutely necessary for web development are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, you are unlikely to create an attractive website or web application without the help of additional web development languages such as PHP, Python and/or Java to enhance the content and structure.
What are the most popular web development languages?
There are several languages that are often used for web development. Some of the most popular programming languages for web development include HTML/CSS, PHP, Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, and Swift. But this list is not exhaustive and there are several others to refer to when necessary.
Source: BairesDev
