There is always a backend system running in the background and making sure everything just works, especially while we are building modern applications such as web applications.
This is a backend that includes data processing, dealing with the database and user requests. While there are many more, these are some of the most well-known when it comes to building backends: Node. js, Python, and PHP.
In this blog, we will delve deeper into these three popular backend development languages to determine when each should be used and where they excel.
Whether you are new to the world of programming, expert professional or a renowned software development agency, this article will help you make the right choice for which backend language is best used for your upcoming backend project.
The Primary Backend Development Languages
Node.js, Python and PHP are some of the most popular backend languages out there for web app development services.
Every one of these languages has a strong presence in the development world with some powerful frameworks, vibrant communities and a rich ecosystem.
Nodejs
First, we need to understand why Node. js is different from every other backend development language before diving deep into each one of them. It is a runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine for easily building fast, scalable network applications. It is widely used to build real-time applications and systems of high concurrent nature.
Python
Recognized for its simplicity and readability, Python is a general-purpose language known to be used in fields like data science to web development.
It is mostly chosen for the backend development languages by most of the custom software development companies due to its powerful frameworks (Django/Flask).
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor)
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language designed for custom web app development services. PHP has been running the most popular websites such as Facebook and WordPress. It can be especially excellent in creating dynamic page content.
All 3 languages are great but depending on the factors you might choose one over another. Let’s have a brief look at each of them.
Python
Python (known to be an extremely simple language) is very widely used along with the backend development community. It was used by around 48.2% of developers worldwide as per 2023.
But what about the backend in web development where we can use Python?
Spotify — One of the biggest music streaming services, uses Python for back-end services and also to power its recommendation engines.
Dropbox — A file-storing and syncing service, Dropbox uses Python for the back end, allowing it to effectively handle data from millions of users.
Instagram — A worldwide popular social media platform Instagram that uses Python extensively in the backend. The company decided to go with Python in the beginning because of its simplicity and scale. Instagram, which uses Django (Python), a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
With its 1 billion active users processes a large volume of data (in form of photos, comments, likes) in the backend powered by Python. The ability of Python to handle Instagram’s scale and their more extensive developer community played it majorly if not entirely, as the most significant factor in choosing this backend programming language.
The simplicity of Python along with its wide range of libraries does wonders for companies looking to scale fast and ensure good performance all the time.
Why Should You Use Python As A Back End?
The popularity of Python as a backend development language can be attributed to many factors like:
Learnability:
Syntax of Python is simple, clean and easy to learn. This means that it is loved by developers, essential for every web app developer. This simplicity helps developers develop faster, which in turn causes less time to be spent on writing confusing syntax.
Frameworks — Django and Flask:
Django is a CRUD web application that provides all the necessary tools to get it started. Following the “batteries included” philosophy implies that it provides you with authentication and ORM-out-of-the-box. Many developers thus prefer the micro-framework called Flask, which still allows for flexibility and control without adding unnecessary features. Additionally, developers can leverage Python’s compatibility with Micro frontend architecture, an approach that splits the frontend into smaller, decoupled parts that are easier to maintain. This approach can complement Python’s backend capabilities, enabling even more scalable, componentized web development.
Reasonable Libraries:
Machine learning (TensorFlow, PyTorch), web development (Django, Flask) and more, if you will do whatever libraries you like! It is an ecosystem that provides the ready components which leads to reduced development time.
Community and Support are literally where Python shines the brightest with longlist of tutorials, open-source projects and forums. Community support guarantees a relentless set of answers ready for developers regarding any issue they may face.
Node.js
For backend developers, Node.js became all the rage as a JavaScript runtime that is built on Chrome’s V8 engine. It allows JavaScript to run both on the browser and backend side. Actually it is a meteoric rise in popularity.
Node.js is the best choice in the tech stack of any web app development company, having been used by 36.19% of developers working on various projects.
Advantages of Node.js to use as Backend Language in Web development
The architecture is non-blocking so it can be used in real-time applications like chat, games where multiple users are interacting with each other at the same time.
High Performance Due to V8 engine:
Node.js is super fast and provides execution of JavaScript code. It is critical for things like messaging services or collaborative tools as they often live in the real-time (instantaneous message, etc.) domain and latency must be very close to zero.
Same Language in the Input Stack:
One of Node.js’s biggest advantages is that it allows web app developers to write JavaScript for both the frontend and backend. The same language handles both client-side and server-side logic, simplifying development and reducing the learning curve for full-stack developers.
Scalability:
Node. js, being lightweight and non-blocking, scaled well. Node.js becomes more of an answer for applications that require a number of concurrent connections, (i.e. online games, some streaming services), but you still like to run your frontend and backend on one server, or at least minimize the overhead running over localhost causes. js is often a top choice.
Strong Ecosystem:
Node.js has some of the best benefits that it takes with npm (Node Package Manager) which hosts more than a million open source packages. They used it to create a large library of common tools and modules, which speeds up development time significantly by cutting down on the amount of re-creation needed for things like user authentication, API management, database interaction etc.
Netflix as a global broadcast service with millions on their list of daily viewers uses it. js on the backend to render front-end User interfaces and dealing with lots of real-time data. needs content to maintain this platform quickly, reliably personalized world, efficient scale synchronize humanly across Node. Real time streaming video with millions of users is done perfectly due the asynchronous, non-blocking architecture that Node.js uses. Node. Node.js decreased the start up time of Netflix leading to user adept scaling.
Find out latest Node.js update here.
PHP
PHP (Hypertext Pre processor) is an oldie but goodie dating back to 1995 and as such has a respectable tradition of its own in the world of web development.
In fact, PHP powers 79.2% of all websites that use a server-side programming language, including behemoths such as Facebook, WordPress and Wikipedia.
PHP is one of the best known and widely used server-side script languages for use on PHP compatible web servers.
Advantages of PHP to use as Backend Language in Web development
Short Learning Curves:
PHP has syntax like python which makes it very easy to learn. It is especially loved among newbie web developers for its easy to write syntax and integration with HTML.
CMS-Friendly:
PHP powers most common content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. If you are creating a CMS based website or platform then PHP is the most suitable programming language for that.
Extensive Community:
PHP is one of the oldest backend languages, which means there are innumerable documentation pages, tutorials & hundreds and thousands of open-source projects out there!
High Usability:
With wide usage on the internet, deployment of PHP applications is quite easier as most of the web hosting supports PHP natively so less manual configurations are needed to deploy PHP applications. And this is one of the main reasons behind why so many smaller and medium sized websites stick to PHP.
Frameworks and Tools: PHP offers multiple high-performance frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter.
WordPress and PHP
WordPress is written in PHP, the most popular web programming language (over 40% of websites are powered by WordPress). WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that permits users to set up websites, blogs, or online stores on their own with little technical know-how.
The purpose of PHP is to create HTML dynamically, request the database for data and interact with a user. The huge themes, plugins and customization options universe of WordPress is possible only because it has PHP on its side, with many people throughout the world having already spent countless hours working with and customizing this server-side script.
PHP is one of the oldest backend programming languages, but it still adapts to newer versions and frameworks like Laravel improved its solutions by a lot.
How to Choose the Best Backend Language for Your Project
With so many different backend programming languages out there, how can you choose the best?
With the three primary backend languages now covered, Python, Node.js and PHP. It’s way more important to understand how to decide which particular option will best suit your project.
There are some factors as follows:
Project Type: Will you be developing a data-centric web application (Python), real-time app (Node. — a traditional website (php) or;
Performance requirements: If the performance is a big deal for you, then you should go with Node. Some people might suggest using js instead because it is async and non-blocking by nature.
Normal Development Speed: Python is typically the fastest language to develop due to its readability and large library use.
Community and Support: Each language has a strong community, but PHP and Python’s long-standing presence offers a wealth of resources on backend development and guide to the responsive web design topics.
Framework: Django available for Python, Express for Node + DB / ORM as per choice. Frameworks such as Spring for Java, React for JS, and Laravel in PHP can accelerate development so much.
Apps and Deployment: PHP still continues to be supported by a large number of different web hosts out there, making it the default choice for deployment. It is worth noting though that AWS, Heroku) itself is already a modern cloud platform and all three backend languages are well-supported.
Future Trends with Backend languages
Backend languages, like most aspects of technology, continue to change as future technologies develop or as industry needs are created.
At this point, however, here are a few trends which we can identify:
Serverless Architecture:
Serverless computing is gaining popularity with time. The reason for this is that in a serverless application, containing complex infrastructure becomes pretty difficult as a backend developer. For instance, both AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions offer support for languages like Node. Because of the lightweight nature of js and Python.
Real-time Applications:
With the fast-growing use cases of real-time applications like chatting bots, live-streaming platforms, collaborative tools node.js continues to gain ground. Its scalability and concurrency handling capabilities make it one of the major players in this realm.
Python, especially with Django and Flask, is fast becoming a go-to language for microservices architectures where applications are broken down into smaller independent services that work together.
AI and Machine Learning:
Python is by far the number one choice of backend programming language which is widely used in AI and machine learning developments. Given the growing importance of these technologies in the industry, Python is expected to play an increasingly massive role in backend development.
Conclusion
Each project should have a unique set of needs and selection of a backend language should be determined by that. It is no great secret that python has become very popular due to its ease of use and a wide range of libraries making it perfect for fast development, AI driven applications and for data centric projects. Its easy syntax lets developers build robust applications quickly which is why it is a favorite amongst the many.
While you may consider moving some things to JavaScript, PHP continues to be a strong choice for web based applications, especially for CMS applications where it plays a longstanding role. It is simple, widely supported on shared hosting environments, and perfect when developers want to quickly deploy websites and manage dynamic content. PHP along with its frameworks such as Laravel have been modernized by continuous updates and are becoming more competitive in web development.
On the contrary, Node.js is considered top when it comes to handling asynchronous programming and is great for real time applications like Chat system, online gaming and collaborative tools. Being a JavaScript core language, it also makes it possible to change between the frontend and backend roles quite seamlessly, and to have a more unified development experience. High performance is gained by means of its event driven, non blocking nature, particularly for I/O heavy applications.
Ultimately it comes down to what the project needs, what the team is good at, and how big you want the thing to be. However, Python is great for data heavy applications, PHP is ideal for principle deployment and Node.js is unbeatable for real time, scalable solutions. This knowledge helps developers to select the right choice for the project’s goals and thereby bring out best results.