When designing a web application, the choice of language is often the subject of much consideration because it impacts both the short-term development of the application and its long-term evolution and maintenance. In this article, we offer an overview of the most commonly used languages today and some guidance to help you make a choice.
Languages for Developing a Web Application
First of all, what is a programming language 🤔? It is the language in which you must write your program so that it can be properly executed by a machine, such as a computer server, a web browser, a mobile browser, etc.
For example, this site primarily uses two languages to function, PHP and Javascript.
Many programming languages are available for designing a web application. Here are four of the most regularly used:
- Javascript
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
The Language for the Back-End
These four languages can be used to design the back-end of your application. The back-end is the hidden part of your application, the one that will notably communicate with the database. Concretely, let's imagine you want to display a user's profile; for this, you will request this information from your database. You will write a query in the form "send me the information of the user whose ID is 1," and you will receive a response containing the requested user's information.
To visualize this, here is what it looks like using Django's ORM (Python):
user = User.objects.get(id=1)
As you can see, it's not rocket science; we create a "user" variable in which we will store the response to our request, which is easily understandable even without being a developer.
The language for the front-end
For the front-end (the visible part of your site), these languages allow you to generate HTML to display your pages. JavaScript has a special status because it can be used both as a server language (back-end) and as a front-end language in conjunction with others. For example, an application can use Python for the back-end and JavaScript for the front-end.
Let's be clear, none of these languages is inherently better than another. Of course, some performance tests highlight the speed of certain languages for specific operations. However, in most cases, these performance differences will be imperceptible in real-world situations.
The popularity of languages
When choosing your programming language, you must consider a phenomenon known as hype 🤩. Even in software development, there are trends. For example, five years ago, the hype was around Ruby; currently, it's more about JavaScript. These trends are interesting because they reveal things about the market and the dynamics of a language. Nonetheless, they should not be given undue importance. For example, a language like PHP is often seen as the "ugly duckling" of programming languages, yet it is the most widely adopted language on the web.
What matters above all is to use the chosen language well and to apply good programming practices. Because if an application's code is of poor quality, even if it is designed with a high-performance language, it will not make it better.
It is also important to be aware that the popularity of a language varies depending on the region of the world. By using Google Trends, we can notably observe that the Python Django framework is more commonly used in France and Germany, while the PHP Laravel framework is more popular in Italy or Spain.
Using a Framework
To design a web application, a good practice is generally to use a framework. A framework (a cadriciel in French) is a set of pre-programmed components. This allows the project to start without having to reinvent everything. A framework thus provides a significant productivity boost. They generally facilitate the integration of features such as routing, authentication, etc. One might want to start from scratch, but this usually requires larger investments and is not always justified. Finally, it typically demands a higher level of technical expertise.
Each of these four languages offers several frameworks for designing an application. Here is the framework we select for each of these languages:
- Javascript with the Express framework or more recently Nestjs
- PHP with the Laravel framework
- Python with the Django framework (our favorite on the list 😉)
- Ruby with the Ruby on Rails framework
Each of these frameworks is very well designed and allows for the creation of a wide variety of applications. It is also worth noting that what you can do with one, you can often do with another.
The Ecosystems of Each Language
Example of a scatter plot created with Matplotlib in Python
Each of these languages has an ecosystem composed of tools, including frameworks. In addition to frameworks, there are libraries. These allow you to add features to your program. A library can, for example, help you use an API.
When choosing a programming language, if you have specific functional needs, check beforehand if the language you are considering offers libraries that enable these features. Once again, this will save you time 🤓
For example, if you need a library for data manipulation (whether it's Big Data or even more modest projects), Python is the recommended language thanks to its libraries like NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, etc. These libraries notably facilitate the manipulation of data sets and their visualization.
Finally, frameworks and libraries are often developed in an open-source manner, meaning they are generally the result of collective development under a free license. This means you can use them in your project without having to pay a fee or be dependent on a software vendor.
In conclusion, there is no definitive answer to "What is the best language?" The choice of language should be based on your context: Is a particular library available? What language does my team master? Once these questions are addressed, the answer will likely become more apparent.
