Choosing what the best backend technologies to use in 2019 is one of the key decisions that need to be taken. Regardless whose dilemma it is, whether a startup founder or a product owner, it's of great importance to determine which language to use in said project. A well-chosen technology will ensure your speed of operation, scalability and the ability to modernize to customer needs quickly.
The question of choosing the best backend technology in 2019 is to answer these three questions:
- Problem Domain (Every technology has its own business use and pros and cons)
- Characteristics of the language (This depends on what you need it to do)
- Technical expertise (The choice of the language will depend on your team capability)
Be that as it may, it's incredibly difficult to articulate what the difference between two programming languages is. This is because all programming languages have their own personal army of advocates who will refuse criticism of any kind. Therefore, it's tremendously crucial to not only understand the difference between them but also be aware of the impact a poor language can make.
Let's have a look at the most popular technologies according to Stack Overflow's latest study of 100,000 developers.
The best backend technologies to use in 2019 are:
- Ruby on Rails
- Laravel
- Express.js
- Django
- Pyramid
- Flask
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is very well known for a long time for being easy to read and write. Also popular in Rails is an add-on framework for Ruby that makes it very simple to build web apps.
Ruby on Rails currently tops the list of the best backend technologies to use in 2019.
The language popularity has given it a very strong response of more than 10% of all asked developers dedicated to Ruby for being their first choice language. It's also rapidly growing in popularity – more than 46% of responses see Ruby as their favorite environment to work on.
Ruby on Rails development is very fast, which makes it exceptionally good for startups. It’s created on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) attitude, which makes even the most complicated applications easy to extend with new features or business logic. Alike Django, there are some really astonishing examples of Ruby on Rails in action, which makes it a trustworthy framework.
The main goal of Ruby on Rails is the speed and ease of writing code, which saves you time and increases the quality of implementation. Be that as it may, a very serious drawback of this solution is a slow action compared to the competition – requirements for the server and scaling problems are often indicated by the programmers.
The Ruby on Rails community is enormous – and by the community we mean that pretty much every big city has community meets on a regular basis. Many questions your developer team might ask have already been answered somewhere. There are different open-source libraries (also known as gems), so a lot of work has already been done by someone else. Be that as it may, it might get a little bit hard to find good documentation for said gems, especially in less known libraries.
Examples of implementation: Airbnb, Couchsurfing, Kickstarter, Shopify, GitHub, Bloomberg.
Laravel
The PHP language is one of the top ten in the network, mainly due to the extraordinary popularity of WordPress and some frequently used frameworks. Huge popularity always influences a large community gathered around PHP, thanks to which we will find on the network a lot of solutions already posted that will help you develop faster to a lower cost.
PHP is very well known for the ability to integrate many databases and is a very dynamic language. It has truly done an amazing job providing all the essential features that programmers require for creating web apps, backend database work, and authentication issues.
Among the PHP frameworks, it's worth looking in Laravel. Laravel is not accidentally one of the best backend technologies to use in 2019.
Laravel is a PHP MVC framework that speeds up the development process with its elegant and simple syntax pattern, database migration and schema builder tools. Simple and very secure authentication is also something to benefit from.
The documentation of Laravel is very clean, organized and understandable. The MVC architecture is supported in Laravel and it helps in bringing a variety of built-in functions to select from a better development architecture. Laravel allows the developers to create both small as well as huge applications. Laravel gives a secure API building structure that can support building the Hybrid Applications.
PHP has its advocates and critics. Not every developer team is so eager to work with PHP, but despite numerous critics, developers often use it.
Examples of implementation: laracasts.com, events.arsenal.com
Express.js
Looking back at the latest list of the most popular technologies, JavaScript still remains one of the most commonly used programming languages. And it's an unchangeable leader. Almos 70% (out of 78,334 responses) have indicated JavaScript as the first choice framework.
Express.js deservedly makes the list of the best backend technologies to use in 2019.
That's probably why most developers have adopted the Node.js framework under their technological and production wings. It provides remarkable scalability and amazing support for a lot of issues simultaneously. It's currently being used for a service or app that is designed to quickly handle many tasks from a colossal number of users at the same time.
Express.js is a server-side and mobile API application framework for Node.js. It’s also one of the most supported Node.js frameworks. It has an open-source community, so the code is always evaluated and updated. Express.js together with Node.js can be used for developing APIs for single-page, multi-page, hybrid mobile, and web apps.
Express.js framework allows your dream dev team to use the same language which is JavaScript both on the back-end and front-end. As a result, the development process is much faster and easier as one person can manage both presentation and data access layers.
Examples of implementation: Uber, PayPal, Netflix, Linkedin
Django
According to this year's survey results, Python has a substantial claim to being the fastest-growing major programming language. Python is also the most wanted language for the second year in a row, indicating that it is the language that developers who do not yet use it most often say they want to learn – 25,1% of developers who are not progressing with the language or technology have shown interest in developing with Python.
Django is currently the most popular Python Web framework that pushes rapid development and a very clean pragmatic design. Currently, Python works on any platform – and is open source – and still remains scalable for further development. As it uses a set of components, it provides a standard way to develop websites very easily and fast. Django's primary goal is to ease the creation of complex database-driven websites.
Django is currently one of the best solutions to create a Minimum Viable Product which can further be built on becuase it becomes fully featured. This indicates that it already includes all the necessary tools for creating pretty much any additional feature for the said product.
Also, Django offers one of the highest levels of security, ensuring that your project is very safe. Simultaneously, Django can connect to a large number of existing third-party applications like Twitter, Facebook or payment apps.
Proper documentation is very critical in saving developer time, which interprets into saving customers money. Django has all of the key aspects required to guarantee the focus is on the project’s development. Django scalability is also one of the most important parts of the project development and growth. It also has one of the biggest communities together with open source library gives developers a wonderful tool helping them deliver more features in less time.
Examples of implementation: Instagram, Disqus, NASA.
Pyramid
Simply put, Pyramid makes it very easy to write web apps. As your app grows, Pyramid will offer you many features that make your writing complex software take less effort. Also, Pyramid works in all supported versions of Python. Therefore, Python followers might find it very beneficial to their advantage.
Developers may dive right into Pyramid's documentation or browse the extensive API reference. Pyramid has a very rich and large pool of resources. Pyramid, alike Django, comes with bootstrapping tools built-in.
You might use it for small apps but it also powers tier-top websites. One of the most frequent complaints about Pyramid is that it presents so many options it can be intimidating to start a new project.
Example of implementation: Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, Reddit.
Flask
Yet another Python framework. And it also takes part as one of the best backend technologies to use in 2019
Being a minimalistic framework for building web applications, Flask has its core simple. But there are a large number of extensions that integrate with it very well and easily. It mostly relies on middlewares, which is a pluggable approach to add functionalities when needed.
You might consider Flask more Pythonic than Django. This is for the sole purpose that the code is in most cases explicit. Flask was also written a couple of years after Django. Therefore learned a lot from the Python community's reactions as it evolved.
No matter what you want your remote team to build, a fully loaded web app or soothing API, Flask can be the one framework they might need.
Examples of implementation: Blender3D, World of Tanks, Bitly, Google.
Is there any other language we forgot? Contact us to let us know!
Last update: 16.09.2019 11:42am
Alicia leads content strategy for LearnWorthy managing a team of content producers, strategists, and copywriters. She creatively oversees content programs, awareness campaigns, research reports, and other integrated marketing projects.
