Backend programming languages

Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source server environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment, runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine, and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser. Node.js lets developers use JavaScript to write command line tools and for server-side scripting. The ability to run JavaScript code on the server is often used to generate dynamic web page content before the page is sent to the user's web browser. Consequently, Node.js represents a "JavaScript everywhere" paradigm, unifying web-application development around a single programming language, as opposed to using different languages for the server- versus client-side programming. Node.js has an event-driven architecture capable of asynchronous I/O. These design choices aim to optimize throughput and scalability in web applications with many input/output operations, as well as for real-time Web applications (e.g., real-time communication programs and browser games). The Node.js distributed development project was previously governed by the Node.js Foundation, and has now merged with the JS Foundation to form the OpenJS Foundation. OpenJS Foundation is facilitated by the Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects program.

.NET (pronounced as "dot net"; formerly named .NET Core) is a free and open-source, managed computer software framework for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. It is a cross-platform successor to .NET Framework. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft employees by way of the .NET Foundation, and released under an MIT License. .NET MAUI also supports Android and iOS (also with .NET 6), i.e., .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) is a cross-platform framework for creating native mobile and desktop apps with C# and Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). .NET 7 (released in 2022, .NET 6 LTS is the only other currently supported release) is for many features fully compatible, but Microsoft has a long list on incompatible changes, often individual features are no longer binary compatible while source compatibility is retained, in some cases vice versa, and in rare cases neither.

Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers write once, run anywhere (WORA) meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need to recompile. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture. The syntax of Java is similar to C and C++, but has fewer low-level facilities than either of them. The Java runtime provides dynamic capabilities (such as reflection and runtime code modification) that are typically not available in traditional compiled languages. As of 2019, Java was one of the most popular programming languages in use according to GitHub,[citation not found] particularly for client–server web applications, with a reported 9 million developers

Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation via the off-side rule. Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured (particularly procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. It is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library. Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC programming language and first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0. Python 2.0 was released in 2000. Python 3.0, released in 2008, was a major revision not completely backward-compatible with earlier versions. Python 2.7.18, released in 2020, was the last release of Python 2. Python consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages.

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module, a daemon or as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP code – which may be any type of data, such as generated HTML or binary image data – would form the whole or part of an HTTP response. Various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks exist which can be employed to orchestrate or facilitate the generation of that response. Additionally, PHP can be used for many programming tasks outside the web context, such as standalone graphical applications and robotic drone control. PHP code can also be directly executed from the command line. The standard PHP interpreter, powered by the Zend Engine, is free software released under the PHP License. PHP has been widely ported and can be deployed on most web servers on a variety of operating systems and platforms. The PHP language evolved without a written formal specification or standard until 2014, with the original implementation acting as the de facto standard which other implementations aimed to follow. Since 2014, work has gone on to create a formal PHP specification. W3Techs reports that as of January 2023, "PHP is used by 77.8% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know." It also reports that only 8% of PHP users use the currently supported 8.x versions. Most use unsupported PHP 7, more specifically 7.4, and even PHP 5 has 23% of the use, also not supported with security updates, and known to have serious security vulnerabilities