The Most Popular Programming Languages in Web Development

When the industry sets some standards, there is often a good reason why it has been done that way. Industry standards typically make everything easier, from planning to development. You can implement the standards and meet the requirements of the consumers and make everything compatible.

However, standards don’t mean that something is popular. While there are lots of standards for coding and development, not everyone adheres to them.

In the world of web development, some languages are more popular than others. Here are the most popular ones, and the reasons why.

HTML/CSS And JavaScript

These three languages go hand in hand, sort of. HTML and CSS generate the content on the web pages and they are markup languages and not really programming languages. They generate the text and the images on the web pages. Without them, it would be much more tedious to create a web page, or rather, you would have to code much more than by using them.

JavaScript is a bit more complex, in the sense that it can be used for front-end development as well as back-end, not to mention to build applications. JavaScript is used on 97% of all websites, which should tell you something about the language.

It can be used in back-end programming, typically with node.js. Applications are built in JS, like Discord, not to mention browser video games.

Python

Python is one of the world’s most popular languages, period. It uses very easy syntax, which can be understood by most English-speakers, which makes it great when you have to explain what’s going on in the code to a non-programmer, like the person who is going to maintain your site.

Python can be used to do almost anything, which is why it’s typically used on the back-end side of things. It has huge community support, meaning there are libraries and chunks of code you could re-use whenever you want.

PHP

PHP is one of the most widely used languages for back-end programming. One of the world’s most popular CMSs is WordPress, written in PHP. A lot of sites are hosted using WordPress, making PHP a major player in the back-end deal of things.

Given that PHP can also be used to write applications, it has seen lots of use in web development. It is also one of those languages that can handle a lot of data efficiently, if you write the code well. It is a great overall language for web development.

Ruby

Ruby is a great language, one that is similar to Python, easy to understand and also object-oriented. Because it has such wide support, and the ability to call various building blocks on demand, not to mention that it can manage and clean memory on its own, it is very popular with web developers. It also serves as the core of the Ruby on Rails framework, which is often used to build web applications. Given its readability, non-programmers can interact with it and maintain their site with some instructions.

Swift

Apple’s continuation of Objective C, Swift is an open source language which is used for developing applications for Apple products and their platforms. It is user and programmer friendly, making it a great beginner, but also a great language for advanced programmers.

These are the best languages for web development. Either of them alone or a combination of any of them will land you a web developer job.