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What are the most enjoyable programming languages for web development?

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10 Options Considered

10 Options ConsideredPriceCurrent stable versionPrice
89
Elm
-0.18Open Source
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Python
-3.6.5 and 2.7.15–
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Typescript
-–Open Source
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Ruby
-2.4.1Open Source (Free)
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Haskell
-––
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89

Elm

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DecorousNargun
Top Pro

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

•••
In no other language you can refactor so easy without any worries, since the compiler will guide you through. It is like TDD but than compiler-error driven.
Laura Kyle
Eugene A. Simonenko
Top Pro

Pure functional and statically typed

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Understandable error messages and other feedback

•••
Error messages are carefully formatted with color highlighting and indicators. Errors also come with hints on how to fix problems.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Clean syntax

•••
No semicolons, weird operators, unpronounceable functions. Elm strives to have unsurprising naming and simplified syntax relative to other Haskell/ML-like languages.
Rok
Top Pro

Editor support

•••
Has great editor support. There are tools like elm-oracle which can be easily used via external application calls to make a plugin for a not yet supported editor.
Endi Sukaj
thermoplastics
Rok
Top Pro

Scale without complications

•••
The Elm architecture is a pattern you follow when writing modules, that enables you to scale your application without major complications.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

No run-time exceptions

•••
Lack of run-time exceptions makes it easy to produce large swathes of reliable front-end code without drowning in tests.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Designed around high-level front-end development 

•••
As Elm was designed as a front-end langauge, it has out of the box support for things like DOM-element creation, letting programmers focus on their application logic, rather than implementation details specific to the web.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Easy to debug

•••
Elm has a time traveling debugger which helps a great deal with debugging. The absence of run-time errors also makes the surface area for things that can go wrong much smaller.
feluxe
Top Pro

Growing community 

•••
Elm is gaining popularity, somewhat faster than many of the other solutions here. This translates to more code examples, more documentation, and more libraries.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Limited amount of libraries

•••
Third party library documentation is hosted on package.elm-lang.org, where you can find what's around. Compared to other languages, on the web or otherwise, there aren't very many libraries. Again a young language problem.
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Python

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David Managadze
Top Pro

Has many powerful web frameworks

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Comes with extensive libraries

•••
Python ships with a large standard library, including modules for everything from writing graphical applications, running servers, and doing unit testing. This means that beginners won't need to spend time searching for tools and libraries just to get started on their projects.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Active and Helpful User Community

•••
comp.lang.python is particularly active and helpful, and StackExchange is another good option.
Paulo Scardine
Top Pro

Powerful tools for data science and AI/ML

•••
Whether you are reporting election results, forecasting stock returns, optimizing online ad clicks, identifying microorganisms in microscope photos, seeking new classes of astronomical objects, or working with data in any other field, Python has some of the best tools out there for answering this t...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Syntax is similar to spoken English

•••
Python's syntax is very clear and readable, making it excellent for beginners. The lack of extra characters like semicolons and curly braces reduces distractions, letting beginners focus on the meaning of the code. Significant whitespace also means that all code is properly and consistently ind...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Language fragmentation

•••
A large subset of the Python community still uses / relies upon Python 2, which is considered a legacy implementation by the Python authors. Some libraries still have varying degrees of support depending on which version of Python you use. There are syntactical differences between the versions.
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros
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Typescript

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AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Checks syntax a compile time

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Checks types a compile time

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Easy migration from existing Javascript code

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Developed and supported by a large company

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Huge collection of extern definitions

•••
Interface your code with existing Javascript libraries
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Debugging in Typescript code through source maps

•••
Modern browsers support source maps, allowing you to debug generated Javascript code using the original Typescript code.
AlexHaxe
Top Con

No conditional compilation

•••
There is no support for conditional compilation where you can mark certain parts of your code that only get included in the final product when a compiler switch was set. e.g. #if debug .... #end
AlexHaxe
Top Con

No Java-like package structure

•••
Modules, namespaces and imports exist but they don't work like what people coming from Java development would expect I've been using Typescript for quite some time now, and I'm still not sure I fully understand them.
AlexHaxe
Top Con

Can only transpile to Javascript code

•••
If your front- and backend both run Javascript, Typescript is definitely an improvement over plain Javascript. However if your e.g. backend runs a different language, Typescript can't help you.
See 7 more Pros & ConsSee 7 more Pros & Cons
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Ruby

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Elegant syntax

•••
Ruby has a very clean syntax that makes code easier to both read and write than more traditional Object Oriented languages, such as Java. For beginning programmers, this means the focus is on the meaning of the program, where it should be, rather than trying to figure out the meaning of obscure cha...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

A Large Ecosystem of tools & libraries

•••
Ruby has a large ecosystem of tools and libraries for just about every use. Such as ORMs (Active Record, DatabMapper), Web Application Frameworks(Rails, Sinatra, Volt), Virtualization Orchestration(docker-api, drelict), CLI tools(Thor, Commando), GUI Frameworks(Shoes, FXRuby) and the list goes on....
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Meta-programming causes confusion for new developers

•••
The ability for libraries to open classes and augment them leads to confusion for new developers since it is not clear who injected the functionality into some standard class. In other words, if two modules decide to modify the same function on the same class can introduce a number of issues. Main...
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Haskell

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Theodore Lief Gannon
Top Pro

Compiler-assisted refactoring

•••
Theodore Lief Gannon
Top Pro

Many common bugs fail to compile

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Terse

•••
Haskell is a very terse language, particularly due to its type inference. This means there's nothing to distract from the intent of the code, making it very readable. This is in sharp contrast to languages like Java, where skimming code requires learning which details can be ignored. Haskell...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Mathematical consistency

•••
As Haskell lends itself exceedingly well to abstraction, and borrows heavily from the culture of pure mathematics, it means that a lot more code conforms to very high-level abstractions. You can expect code from vastly different libraries to follow the same rules, and to be incredibly self-consiste...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Very few language constructs

•••
The base language relies primarily on function application, with a very small amount of special-case syntax. Once you know the rules for function application, you know most of the language.
Endi Sukaj
Theodore Lief Gannon
Top Con

Steep initial learning curve

•••
Haskell lends itself well to powerful abstractions - the result is that even basic, commonly used libraries, while easy to use, are implemened using a vocabularly that requires a lot of backround in abstract mathematics to understand. Even a concept as simple as "combine A and B" is ofte...
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros
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Lua

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Volmar Machado
Top Pro

Tarantool and Redis native query language

•••
Endi Sukaj
Rok
Top Pro

Clean and simple syntax suitable for beginners

•••
The Lua syntax is modeled from Modula, a language known for being a fantastic introduction to programming. The Lua syntax also has the following key characteristics: Semicolon as a statement separator is optional (mostly used to resolve ambiguous cases as in a = f; (g).x(a)). Syntactic su...
Rok
Top Pro

OpenResty

•••
Existing web frameworks are mostly built on top of OpenResty. Because of that they have extremely high performance.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Great documentation

•••
The official Lua documentation is very helpful and thorough. There are also a large number of online resources or books with lots of helpful information for beginners and advanced users alike.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Portable

•••
Lua can be built on any platform with a ANSI C compiler. Other than that, Lua is extremely small. For example, the tarball for Lua 5.2.1 is only 245K compressed and 960K uncompressed (including documentation). When built on Linux, the Lua interpreter built with the standard libraries takes 182K a...
Endi Sukaj
Rok
Top Pro

Fast

•••
Lua's performance compares very well to other languages, If performance needs to be further improved you can: Implement critical parts in C Use the LuaJIT compiler. The LuaJIT compiler is a drop in replacement for the stock compiler and provides significant performance improvements....
thermoplastics
Rok
Volmar Machado
Top Pro

Luvit Framework for Node developers

•••
Basically Node.js in Lua.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Easy to make mistakes when declaring variables

•••
When writing a function, if a programmer forgets to declare a variable, that variable will be declared at global scope. The code will seem to run fine at first, but if another function uses a variable with the same name, but fails to declare it, it will create subtle, incredibly difficult to find b...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Some concepts may not be applied to other "mainstream" programming languages

•••
Lua features a prototye-based inheritance model. While this is also used by Javascript, it's not used by many other mainstream languages, and so some of the concepts learned while learning Lua won't be very applicable to other languages. Another thing that makes Lua different from other pr...
See 7 more Pros & ConsSee 7 more Pros & Cons
--

Haxe

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AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Dead code elimination

•••
Removes unused types and methods during transpilation.
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Access native features of target platform

•••
Whenever you need to use target specific code (e.g. there is no Haxe library or extern definitions), you can embed fragments as untyped code in your Haxe code.
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Transpiles to Javascript, PHP, Python and many other languages

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Checks syntax at compile time

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Checks types at compile time

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Support multiple different platforms from one source

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Easy sharing of code accross multiple target platforms

•••
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Provides an exit strategy for Flash developers through OpenFl

•••
OpenFl is a library written in Haxe, that duplicates the Flash API, by providing a parallel implementation. Haxe's syntax has a lot of similarities with Actionscript 3. Flash developers can easily migrate their code to Haxe while still using and targeting Flash, in addition to unlocking all...
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 7 more ProsSee 7 more Pros
--

JavaScript

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Great ecosystem

•••
JavaScript has one of the largest programming ecosystems, as shown by the being the most popular language for projects on GitHub. As there are so many projects written in JavaScript there are lots of libraries available to build off of and many of them are written to be easy to use and integrate in...
rein
Top Pro

Simple syntax

•••
The syntax is similar to written English and it's simple to learn.
AlexHaxe
Top Pro

Easy to get into

•••
All you need is a browser and a text editor.
Laura Kyle
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Each browser has its own quirks when executing the same code in some cases

•••
Beginner programmers often make the mistake of coding something, seeing it works in the browser they tested it in, and then scratching their heads when it doesn't work in another browser. Ideally you'd want a language that works consistently across all platforms in order to be able to focus...
AlexHaxe
Top Con

Requires a second language for backend

•••
Unless you use NodeJS on your server, you need a second language like Java or PHP to run your backend.
AlexHaxe
Top Con

Not suitable for large projects

•••
Writing large projects in plain Javascript is doable, but not recommended.
See 4 more Pros & ConsSee 4 more Pros & Cons
--

Golang

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Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

•••
Godoc is provided to automatically generate API documentation for Go projects. Godoc also hosts it’s own self-contained web server that will list documentation for all installed packages in your Go path.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Built-in unit testing

•••
The idiomatic approach to writing a Go software project is to perform test-driven development with unit testing. Every source code file should have an associated *_test.go file which tests functions in the code.
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Easy to install and configure

•••
Go software can be immediately installed, regardless of your operating system, package manager, or processor architecture with the go get command. Software is compiled statically by default so there is no need to worry about software dependencies on the client system. Makefiles and headers are no l...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming.

•••
Simply prepend a function with go to execute it concurrently. Utilizes channels for communication between goroutines which aids to prevent races and makes synchronizing threads effortless. The maximum number of threads to use may be defined at compile time, even if that is limiting goroutines to r...
Izem Lavrenti
Top Pro

Simplified C-like syntax that is as easy to read and write as Python

•••
The language is designed in a manner that seems logical. Syntax is simplified to reduce burden on the programmer and compiler developers.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Hard to abstract even the simplest notions

•••
Go is famously regarded as very simple. However, this simplicity becomes problematic in time. Programmers who use Go find themselves over and over again writing the same thing from a very low point of view. Domains not already served by libraries that are easy to glue are very difficult to get int...
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros
--

PHP

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Endi Sukaj
rein
Top Pro

Easy to find help

•••
PHP have a very large community making it easy find help.
Monika
Top Pro

Most prominent language for web applications

•••
Part of the de facto standard web application stack.
Monika
Top Pro

Lots of PHP frameworks available which help with development

•••
PHP people love frameworks, and with frameworks such as Laravel, you can build a web app or API really fast (Facades, ORMs, scaffolding, etc.)
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Poorly designed language

•••
Despite its widespread use, PHP is generally looked upon poorly from a design point of view. The consistency of function names and function argument order, lazily and borderline non-functional implementation of object oriented programming, can only receive requests via POST methods, slow version ad...
AlexHaxe
Top Con

Hard to get it right

•••
Many of the numerous samples, tutorials and code fragments out there contain serious security flaws or other bugs, like inproper input sanitisation. Sometimes the authors don't know any better, and sometimes they know but forget to mention that their code is not suited for productive systems. A...
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69 Community Recommendations

Piotr Witek
gilch
Eugene A. Simonenko
Eisi Sig
rein
Robin Pokorný
Jared M. Smith
0xREDev
Kevin Li
Oleg Tsyba
David Managadze
+44
Request recommendations from the community
AlexHaxe
AlexHaxe
Contributor for 10 months
7
Total 
Recs.
710
Total 
Karma
Haxe
Recommended a month ago
I've been using Haxe for about 5 years now, mainly targeting PHP and Javascript development. I've also used Haxe to write C++ and Java applications for Linux, Windows. Mac and mobile (Andoid and iOS)
Pro
 Transpiles to Javascript, PHP, Python and many other languages
Pro
 Checks syntax at compile time
Pro
 Checks types at compile time
Pro
 Support multiple different platforms from one source
Pro
 Easy sharing of code accross multiple target platforms
Pro
 Provides an exit strategy for Flash developers through OpenFl
Pro
 Access native features of target platform
Pro
 Dead code elimination
See full
AlexHaxe
AlexHaxe
Contributor for 10 months
7
Total 
Recs.
710
Total 
Karma
Typescript
Recommended a month ago
I've been using Typescript in a large project for at least 2 years now. I prefer Typescript over Javascript any day, but given the choice I prefer Haxe over Typescript.
Pro
 Checks syntax a compile time
Pro
 Checks types a compile time
Pro
 Easy migration from existing Javascript code
Pro
 Developed and supported by a large company
Pro
 Huge collection of extern definitions
Pro
 Debugging in Typescript code through source maps
Con
 Can only transpile to Javascript code
Con
 No Java-like package structure
Con
 No conditional compilation
1See full
Currently displaying 2 out of 69 total recommendations.
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