Ask HN: What web development language do you prefer?

11 points by Aeiper ↗ HN
What languages do you like the most for making websites? (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, etc)

44 comments

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HTML mostly because of the capabilities that came with HTML5.
Have you made any recent websites using HTML5 extensively?
You can't do much with just HTML. Remember, HTML5 is basically just a wrapper around all the new web technologies (local storage, webgl, audio API, web sockets, etc...). Most of these technologies are interfaced with JavaScript and not HTML.
JavaScript (Node.js & Browser), Java and Scala for backend services...
I'm going to go with "etc" from your list of choices.
(comment deleted)
PHP is clumsy but it does the job well.
python is good for web development.
I'm falling in love with Go, but I use Python and PHP a lot.
Ruby, but I'm starting to get into Clojure for web development. There aren't a lot of resources out there so I'm starting to write tutorials.
Mind sharing your tutorials. I've also been interested in Clojure for quite a while but never really got around to getting started.
I only have one tutorial written, I actually just finished it just before writing that comment.

You can get to it here. http://folkrobots.com/2013/04/27/clojure-compojure-tutorial-...

It's only a hello world web application example, not sure if you'd be interested in that. I plan on going through building a simple blog and then building upon that with tutorials for authentication, form validation, etc.

I'm also still not sure if I'm going to keep it in a text format or do screencasts. I searched HN for opinions and people have said that they like text better because they can go at their own pace, but some people like screencasts.

Let me know what kind of tutorials you're looking for. I'm going after web development because I'm mainly a web developer and I find there is a huge lack of resources for beginners.

Been enjoying Haskell (with yesod)
I only have experience writing sites in Clojure so it wins by default.

Not sure if you really have much choice in using HTML or CSS in your website.

NodeJS and Python are my languages of choice.
My favorite thus far has been development in Python with Django. I've also done a lot using C#, and although it wasn't my choice, I've been amazed at what it can do. I think the biggest thing that held back C# over the years was its connection to Microsoft. It is actually very good.

Beyond a doubt, Meteor interests me most for the future. It might not be Meteor js that wins the war, but it has definitely opened my eyes to what could be the future of web development. Looking at Meteor, it was the first time I was really wowed vs my old reaction of "This is a small step forward."

Clojure, I used to do Python with Django or Flask.

HTML/CSS aren't optional so I don't know why you included that in the list.

I've tried Node.js, hated it.

could you describe your experience switching from python to clojure in web dev?
More powerful language (primitives, concision, macros), more performance (JVM fun-ness).

Some aspects of the JVM (slow-start) are icky but the tooling works around it (in-runtime auto-reload without restarting the JVM).

I'm a grumpy old CL'er so I was waiting for something like Clojure to come along anyway.

tx, but I meant the toolset and ecosystem, not the language features. popular frameworks, libs, out of the box solutions, opensource community, etc. - is clojure rich in this matter?
It's not as good as Python yet but rapidly getting better.

There's an excellent SQL abstraction library (Korma), Ring makes for a nice WSGI equivalent, Compojure and Clabango combined give you a Flask'ish experience, and there are a goodly number of Forms and validation libraries.

Some like to use CLJS on the frontend. There are libraries out there for making that nice.

I usually use vanilla jQuery or Angular on the frontend, no CLJS.

You need get more specific with your queries, I'm not going to write a novel at the merest hint.

tx. I was curious how it'd look like to replicate an example full stack of a Python project and you basically covered it. I remeber looking around some time ago and then Noir looked like the go to framework for Clojure, but now it seems discontinued. gotta try CL some day.
CL is Common Lisp.

The go-to for Clojure is Luminus, which is less of a framework and more of a "web best practices" project template.

oops, I meant CLojure :D not very fluent in the Lisp department. tx for the tips.
Python. I use it for making web applications with Google App Engine and Django.
Ruby with Rails. It's a ton of fun.
PHP with Laravel. I can highly recommend it. It really is a RoR-like experience, only without the 'I don't know what just happened but it looks allright'.
PHP for me. I'm a big believer in sticking with what you know best or using the tools you currently have. If it works, it works!

Also the same reason I stick with C# for Win32, Java for Android, etc.