The Answer is PHP

Posted by santosj on August 22, 2007

In class, the question was asked, “What is the most popular Web Programming Language?”

(Author Note: A comment bought up the point that JavaScript is technically the most popular programming language for the Web, however the question was referring to the server side of web site development. JavaScript (EMCAScript) can technically be used in other environments, but most popular for web sites.)

I was waiting for the teacher to say ASP.NET. I didn’t get the specifics but his answer seemed to avoid a direct answer. I’m bias, every answer for the backend, is going to be PHP. However, I’m going to interpret his answer and other advice I’ve read over the years. As for the most popular, that is difficult, the statistics say that PHP is used more. I could bring the source up, however, I think being able to find a paying job would be more important.

I suppose the question was more, “If I was going to program a back end for a web site, which language should I use which would guarantee longevity?” Ten years ago, would the answer had been Perl? Perhaps. I have personally known of a web game and anime fan based sites which switched from Perl to PHP after several years of development in Perl. Nothing against Perl, but perhaps it is easier to work with PHP for web development.

The roundabout answer was probably just saying that the choice of language for any project should be carefully chosen. Going with one language, just because it is more sexy or more developers know the language might be a wrong choice. Or so I’ve heard from much smarter people. Again, I could (and perhaps should) point out a few sources.

I thought about it, for a python programmer, the choice would be Python. A C# developer, most likely would be ASP.NET. As my teacher, from his words alone, doesn’t think much of PHP. It is unlikely that he would ever recommend PHP.

I would definitely choose a language that started out with the primary focus for web development. Whether that is Ruby with Ruby On Rails, PHP, or ASP.NET framework with C# or VB.NET really has to chosen by someone intelligent enough or with the authority to make that decision.

In my humble opinion at least.

Update

Added some clarity. I like the C# class because the teacher is teaching best practices and really nailing it into developers to do programs right the first time, even if it is extra work. I’ll be writing more code in C# and posts, but I’ll never use it for web development.

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4 Comments.

  1. Marc Gear August 23, 2007 at 3:05 am

    Surely the most popular web programming language is Javascript?

  2. Javier Eguiluz August 23, 2007 at 4:27 am

    Ruby on Rails is a framework, not a programming language.

    Languages: PHP, Python, Ruby

    Frameworks: Symfony, Django, Ruby on Rails

  3. Jacob Santos August 23, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    Client side, JavaScript is. I’m discussing server-side programming Marc.

    At Javier:

    Dude. I know Ruby on Rails and .NET are frameworks. While you can create sites using Ruby and C# or whatever, doing so wouldn’t be logical use of time. Ruby on Rails exists for Ruby and ASP.NET exists for C#, VB.NET, etc.

    I believe if I had said “Ruby, PHP, and C#” someone would have stated that you should use Ruby on Rails for Ruby or ASP.NET with C#. While the context is wrong, I do mentioned that PHP was created for the sole purposes of Web Development while Ruby (the language Ruby on Rails is built on/for) and C# was not.

    To be clear, I thought, “‘You should mention that Ruby on Rails and .NET are frameworks.’ Yeah, but I already know and anyone reading this is going to know, I won’t need to. ‘Okay, works for me!’”

  4. Seph August 24, 2007 at 3:02 am

    Funny, I’m a C# developer yet I prefer PHP for web development. PHP is simply the best language to get something up and running fast and cost effectively.

    Which language you choose isn’t really important though, they all achieve the same thing, just in different ways. Whichever way you prefer probably depends on your background as you said; Java programmers tend to be very abstract thinking so that might explain why the generally prefer Ruby over PHP.