

Ask HN: Favorite language for coding webpages? - ImaBauss

I've dabbled in many languages such as Ruby, php, and Java. However I want to choose a language to really stick to master! What are your guyses preferred languages for coding websites/webapps? If you could put benefits as well as drawbacks to your favorite language as well that would be amazing!<p>-Thanks for your time
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samlev
I've spent a lot of time working in PHP. I largely enjoyed my time, because it
provides a (mostly) easy-to-deploy, fast-to-develop platform for web
development. What it also provides is a maintenance nightmare. It promotes
sloppy coding, and the library of standard functions are horribly
inconsistent. Many people never run into this, but whe you really want to
design something properly, using strong OO ideas, then PHP just isn't up to
the task (type hinting is for objects only? what?).

Ruby I've never used personally, but it seems kinda popular. It doesn't have
the market penetration for deployment of PHP or python, though.

Python is my new favourite for web development due to a couple of very nice
frameworks. Django for when I want to build something fast, and don't care too
much about controlling the particulars like user management, etc. Pyramid for
when I want to develop something which will involve a lot of customising
parts. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and what you use is both
personal preference, and should be decided based on the project.

Java - Oh, Java. GWT provides a nice way to build webapps with Java, but I'm
not a fan of using it to build 'page' based web applications. That's personal
preference, though, and I've got no good reasons not to use it - it just rubs
me the wrong way for web.

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callahad
All of the modern languages are pretty capable, and learning any one of them
will make it easier to learn any other.

I'd suggest looking around and figuring out what people in your area are
using, then picking whichever one has the most active user group. Being
connected to real people in that language's community is a great way to stay
motivated and accelerate your learning.

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pshc
Javascript.

Benefits:

\- Sharing code between client and server is a huge win

\- Less impedance mismatch glue code in general

\- V8 is really fast

\- Node.js makes me write everything streaming style which may reduce page
latency

Drawbacks:

\- Javascript (I like coffeescript but I _still_ write more bugs in CS than in
plain JS...)

