Back End Developing

Python! I love the language. It is simple and intuitive. With great frameworks like Flask, Bottle, or Pyramid for small sites and Django for large ones I can't think of a project I couldn't use Python for.

That said sometimes it is not the best choice. If you wanted a real time web app like a chat Node.js might be a better fit.

Ruby and Rails always needs a mention as it is used on an enormous amount of site including this one I believe.

Even Java can be used though I have no experience with that I have heard that Spring is an excellent framework.

Goodluck! --Ricky

It comes down to preference a lot of the time. Java, if you don't specifically build it into your work, has some notable security flaws for back-end work in my opinion. And because of SQL injection techniques that hackers use, it is sometimes worth the notion to avoid PHP altogether when handling databases (although there are some secure programming practices that help but not too many beginner programmers know this).

Python is very dynamic and can build just about anything. It's also a very old language, which is good, because that means it has a large support community for you and your developers. Just about anyone you contract will know something about older languages, too.

From a business stand-point, go with what meets these criteria:

1. How educated is your team (or yourself) on a certain language?
2. Is the language or library you're using proprietary? (Do you have to pay licensing fees to someone?)
3. Do you need to handle large amounts of data, securely, all the time? (Python, Java, MySQL/PHP)
4. Do you need to handle small amounts of data, within the browser, very quickly? (Node.JS)
5. Does your language offer scalability? (Can you easily expand from your chosen language's existing framework?).

I hope that adds some clarity to the wonderful explanation offered by Ricky.

Ricky, the most common vessel for SQL injection is through PHP - as a result, it is heavily covered and there are plenty of known "patches" and better programming practices that are known. You're totally right though, and I should've said that - the right practices of input validation can pretty much remove the issues entirely.

But SQL injection can be done with Java too (really, most any server-side language). But Java may be more difficult to understand because it is not as widely used as PHP for server-side communications.

Some issues in Java 7 can allow for a programmer to completely bypass the sand-boxing features and then they can access the computer in a similar way that C or C++ can, including memory addresses, filesystems and networks. They're getting much better now. But not everybody has the latest versions of Java installed.

Far as my "business statement", that was my hard lesson too! I was building my own browser for weeks using Microsoft's .NET framework with Visual Studio Express. But the EULA and all their licensing nonsense pretty much said that I can't use their products to build software that competes with them (which is what I was trying to do, actually).

Now I have to learn an entirely new open source library and figure out how to get 20,000 lines of Visual Basic code and convert it into C++ code with the Dev C++ compiler instead of the Microsoft one. If I don't, and my software does well, Microsoft may very well sue me and shut it down. Very serious implications in that - try to use open source for your big, personal projects that you intend to earn money from.