What are the most enjoyable programming languages for web development?

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score 22 · Answer 1

Elm

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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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Pure functional and statically typed

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Specs

Current stable version:0.18

Price:Open Source

Site:http://elm-lang.org/

GZipped size:23.2 kB

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score 7 · Answer 2

Python

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. See More

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 More

Top Pro

Has many powerful web frameworks

Top Pro

Active and Helpful User Community

comp.lang.python is particularly active and helpful, and StackExchange is another good option. See More

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 indented. The language also uses natural english words such as 'and' and 'or', meaning that beginners need to learn fewer obscure symbols. On top of this, Python's dynamic type system means that code isn't cluttered with type information, which would further distract beginners from what the code is doing. See More

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 type of questions. See More

Top Pro

Static typing via mypy

Python's syntax supports optional type annotations for use with a third-party static type checker, which can catch a certain class of bugs at compile time. This also makes it easier for beginners to gradually transition to statically typed languages instead of wrestling with the compiler from the start. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

The Python community has put a lot of work into creating excellent documentation filled with plain english describing functionality. Contrast this with other languages, such as Java, where documentation often contains a dry enumeration of the API. As a random example, consider GUI toolkit documentation - the tkinter documentation reads almost like a blog article, answering questions such as 'How do I...', whereas Java's Swing documentation contains dry descriptions that effectively reiterate the implementation code. On top of this, most functions contain 'Doc Strings', which mean that documentation is often immediately available, without even the need to search the internet. See More

Top Pro

Clear syntax

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 indented. The language also uses natural english words such as 'and' and 'or', meaning that beginners need to learn fewer obscure symbols. On top of this, Python's dynamic type system means that code isn't cluttered with type information, which would further distract beginners from what the code is doing. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

On top of the wealth of tutorials and documentation, and the fact that it ships with a sizeable standard library, Python also ships with both an IDE (Integrated Development Environment: A graphical environment for editing running and debugging your code); as well as a text-based live interpreter. Both help users to get started trying out code immediately, and give users immediate feedback that aids learning. See More

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials

Python's popularity and beginner friendliness has led to a wealth of tutorials and example code on the internet. This means that when beginners have questions, they're very likely to be able to find an answer on their own just by searching. This is an advantage over some languages that are not as popular or covered as in-depth by its users. See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.7.0 and 2.7.15

GZipped size:22.5MB

Language type:Interpreted

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score 4 · Answer 3

Haskell

Top Pro

Compiler-assisted refactoring

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 often, both in code and in tutorials, described in terms of confusing and discouraging terms like "monad", "magma", "monoid", "groupoid", and "ring". This also occasionally bears its ugly head in the form of complicated error messages from type inference. See More

Top Pro

Easy syntax for people with a STEM degree

Since the basic syntax is very similar to mathematics, Haskell syntax should be easy for people who have taken higher math courses since they would be used to the symbols used in maths. See More

Top Pro

Hand-writeable concise syntax

Conciseness of Haskell lets us to write the expression on the whiteboard or paper and discuss with others easily. This is a strong benefit to learn FP over other languages. See More

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-consistent. It's not uncommon to find that a parser library works the same way as a string library, which works the same way as a window manager library. This often means that getting familiar and productive with new libraries is often much easier than in other languages. See More

Top Pro

Many common bugs fail to compile

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's terseness also lends itself to very clear inline examples in textbooks, and makes it a pleasure to read through code even on a cellphone screen. See More

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. See More

Specs

Site:https://www.haskell.org/

See All

score 5 · Answer 4

Ruby

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 characters. presidents = ["Ford", "Carter", "Reagan", "Bush1", "Clinton", "Bush2"] for ss in 0...presidents.length print ss, ": ", presidents[presidents.length - ss - 1], "\n"; end See More

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. Mainly, the order in which the modules are included matters. Since you more or less can't tell what kind of "helper" functions a module might write into any class, or for that matter, where the helper function was included from, you may sometimes wonder why class X can do Y sometimes but not at other times. See More

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. If you can think of it, there is probably a gem for that ( and if not you can create your own and share with the community). See More

Specs

Current stable version:2.4.1

Price:Open Source (Free)

Site:https://www.ruby-lang.org

GZipped size:13.5 MB

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score 2 · Answer 5

Typescript

Top Pro

Checks syntax a compile time

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 See More

Top Pro

Checks types a compile time

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. See More

Top Pro

Easy migration from existing Javascript code

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 More

Top Pro

Developed and supported by a large company

Top Pro

Huge collection of extern definitions

Interface your code with existing Javascript libraries See More

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. See More

Specs

Price:Open Source

Site:https://www.typescriptlang.org/

See All

score 3 · Answer 6

Golang

Top Pro

Performance is on the order of C and Java

Go is blazing fast, but easier to write than Python, JS, Ruby, or many other dynamic languages. See More

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 into. See More

Top Pro

Great language for building networking services

Go was started as a systems language but now it has fully committed in the niche of networking services. This has been a brilliant move by Go because it allows them to capitalize on the immense talent of the Go engineering team (who are in the most part network engineers). In a world dominated by Java EE and slow scripting language, Go was a breath of fresh air and it continues to be one of the most powerful languages if you want to build networking services. See More

Top Pro

The go compiler compiles binaries instantly — as fast as a scripting language interpreter

Compiled binaries are fast — about as fast in C in most cases. Compiles on every OS without effort — truly cross-platform compiler. As a result of the fast compilation speed, you can use the gorun program to use go source code as if it was a scripting language. See More

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. See More

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 run on one thread. See More

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 longer necessary, as the package system automatically resolves dependencies, downloads source code and compiles via a single command: go build. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Specs

Current stable version:1.9.2

GZipped size:16MB

Author:Google and Ken Thompson

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

See All

score 3 · Answer 7

Lua

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 bugs. See More

Top Pro

Tarantool and Redis native query language

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 programming languages, is the fact that Arrays start at 1 instead of 0. While helpful for beginners, it can complicate logic and make it very confusing when switching languages. See More

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 sugar for function calls (f'string', f"string", f[[string]], and f{table}) and method calls (obj:m()). See More

Top Pro

OpenResty

Existing web frameworks are mostly built on top of OpenResty. Because of that they have extremely high performance. See More

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. See More

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 and the Lua library takes 243K. The small size and the ability to build with a C compiler make Lua an extremely portable language that can run on a lot of different systems and computers. See More

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. From the overview page: LuaJIT speeds can rival code written in C. See More

Top Pro

Luvit Framework for Node developers

Basically Node.js in Lua. See More

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score 2 · Answer 8

Haxe

Top Pro

Dead code elimination

Removes unused types and methods during transpilation. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Transpiles to Javascript, PHP, Python and many other languages

Top Pro

Checks syntax at compile time

Top Pro

Checks types at compile time

Top Pro

Support multiple different platforms from one source

Top Pro

Easy sharing of code accross multiple target platforms

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 the new targets supported by Haxe / OpenFl. See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.4.7

Price:Open Source

Site:https://haxe.org

See All

score 4 · Answer 9

JavaScript

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 more on the programming and less on the underlying environment. It just takes time away from learning and forces you to spend time figuring out why this worked in browser X but not browser Y. See More

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 into other projects. There are also lots of resources available for learning JavaScript. Other than traditional tutorials, language learning sites such as Codecademy have JavaScript courses. The Mozilla Developer Database also serves as a great resource for learning about the standard libraries built into JavaScript. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Simple syntax

The syntax is similar to written English and it's simple to learn. See More

Top Con

Not suitable for large projects

Writing large projects in plain Javascript is doable, but not recommended. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get into

All you need is a browser and a text editor. See More

Specs

Author:Ryan Dahl/Joyent

Engine:V8/ChakraCore

Version(LTS):8.x

ECMAScript Modules:Available (as a flag) (only on Node 8.x-10.x)

See All Specs >

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score 2 · Answer 10

PHP

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 adoption (the PHP you learn right now may not work on every webserver you'll work on), and a focus on "hacking things together" rather than "doing it right". These are all very common complaints when it comes to working with PHP. While not a bad language to learn, PHP is not at all a good language to learn first, as it will probably teach bad habits. See More

Top Pro

Easy to find help

PHP have a very large community making it easy find help. See More

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. And even if they clearly state that their code needs additional checks and pieces not shown, people might skip over those last words, because it "works". See More

Top Pro

Most prominent language for web applications

Part of the de facto standard web application stack. See More

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.) See More

Specs

Current stable version:7.2

Price:Open Source (free)

See All

10 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Elm

My Recommendation for Elm

Super easy refactoring with very helpful compiler errors

Limited amount of libraries

Pure functional and statically typed

Understandable error messages and other feedback

Clean syntax

Editor support

Scale without complications

No run-time exceptions

Designed around high-level front-end development

Easy to debug

Growing community

My Recommendation for Python

My Recommendation for Python

Comes with extensive libraries

Language fragmentation

Has many powerful web frameworks

Active and Helpful User Community

Syntax is similar to spoken English

Powerful tools for data science and AI/ML

Static typing via mypy

Good documentation

Clear syntax

Easy to get started

Lots of tutorials

My Recommendation for Haskell

My Recommendation for Haskell

Compiler-assisted refactoring

Steep initial learning curve

Easy syntax for people with a STEM degree

Hand-writeable concise syntax

Mathematical consistency

Many common bugs fail to compile

Terse

Very few language constructs

My Recommendation for Ruby

My Recommendation for Ruby

Elegant syntax

Meta-programming causes confusion for new developers

A Large Ecosystem of tools & libraries

My Recommendation for Typescript

My Recommendation for Typescript

Checks syntax a compile time

No conditional compilation

Checks types a compile time

No Java-like package structure

Easy migration from existing Javascript code

Can only transpile to Javascript code

Developed and supported by a large company

Huge collection of extern definitions

Debugging in Typescript code through source maps

My Recommendation for Golang

My Recommendation for Golang

Performance is on the order of C and Java

Hard to abstract even the simplest notions

Great language for building networking services

The go compiler compiles binaries instantly — as fast as a scripting language interpreter

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

Simple and scalable multithreaded and concurrent programming.

Easy to install and configure

Automatically generates API documentation for installed packages

Built-in unit testing

My Recommendation for Lua

My Recommendation for Lua

Easy to make mistakes when declaring variables

Tarantool and Redis native query language

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

Clean and simple syntax suitable for beginners

OpenResty

Great documentation

Portable

Fast

Luvit Framework for Node developers

My Recommendation for Haxe

My Recommendation for Haxe

Dead code elimination

Access native features of target platform

Transpiles to Javascript, PHP, Python and many other languages