Web Development

Question

Why are scripting languages so prominent in web development? How come rust, go, or even c++ viable options?

Answer 1

AndrewI think that Rust and Go are rather new compared to Javascript and Python and that may be one reason they are not as established. C++ can be used on the server side but C# would be a better option due to more stability for example. Python/Django is I guess more popular as it is easier than C#/C++. Of course with Node.js you could use JS on the server side as well without having to learn a completely different language from the front end. PHP is also widely used on the back-end but it has also been popular for about 15 years although that popularity is dropping. At the time, php would have been a better option compared to Perl/CGI.

Answer 2

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking about Rust, Go and C++. Could you elaborate?

Answer 3

Scripting languages are quite popular because they are usually a bit easier but mostly due to historic reasons. This doesn't mean however that other languages aren't good for web development.
For example I've been using Rust now for quite a while and I'm really impressed by this language:
- It's rapidly fast (about 2x faster than go, often slightly faster than C and C++ and over 300x faster than Python)
- Very secure and makes it hard to compile buggy code
- Great ecosystem: A lot of easy to use and incredibly fast web frameworks
- Runs also on front end through web assembly
Actually Rust is already used a lot for web services but it is certainly not mainstream yet.

Answer 4

Sonic how come these languages aren’t as estalbished in the web development world compared to a language like python

Answer 5

Aaron Eberhardt what do you use to do web development with rust? i’m curious cause i want to get better with the language

Answer 6

Andrew For backend I've tried nickel and actix-web. Both are crates (Rust packages) you can easily add to your project and set up a web server in only a few minutes. actix-web has a better documentation though so I prefer it and also it's basically the worlds fastest web framework. However there are lots of other web frameworks in Rust like rocket, tower and iron that you can use too.
For frontend I haven't successfully tried Rust yet but there's a very good article about it: http://cliffle.com/blog/bare-metal-wasm

Answer 7

Aaron Eberhardt thank you!