Programming Languages Web Developers Need to Know for 2018

Programming languages fall in and out of favor like each season's hottest fashions. The sheer volume of languages would overwhelm anyone getting started in programming and web development, and seasoned web devs normally have their go-to languages. At Solodev, our web developers and programmers use a variety of languages each day. 

To get started, there were two languages that our team agreed were 'timeless' staples: HTML and CSS. 

Why HTML and CSS still matter

HTML

It's the standard markup language for the Internet. HTML is normally seen as the introductory language and what gets beginners accustomed to coding. HTML markup describes the layout of a webpage using tags. Those tags relay to the browser how elements like headings, body copy, and links are to be presented. 

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the style language and gives developers the basic tools to bring concepts and design to life. Simply put, CSS and HTML aren't going anywhere anytime soon. These two languages give you both style (CSS) and structure (HTML)

What our web developers and programmers said

Sure it might be easy to regurgitate another top 10 list, but those don’t actually provide feedback from the developers that use these languages every single day. So we asked around our offices and here are the languages our Solodev devs agreed were crucial with a little explanation as to why.

JSON

A vital component in many RESTful API, JSON is that communication link between different systems that have to be integrated. – Scott Madara

Python

Python has been up and coming for the last couple of years, but it’s really coming into prominence. I recently saw an MIT class where the professor was teaching with Python rather than C, C++, and other more traditional languages. Python is also being wrapped into Raspberry Pi and sold to kids so it's what they're being trained on. – Ross Williams

Sass

With an emphasis on page speed, making sure your collection of stylesheets are compressed and utilizing Sass pre-processing is becoming increasing important. – Scott

Making multiple CSS files can become unmanageable very quickly and centralizing all of the styles to make sure there is no overlapping and unnecessary styles is becoming a must. Sass (syntactically awesome stylesheets) certainly help in that regard. – Greg Lenhart

Javascript

Javascript (es6) is essential to us in building frameworks but it’s a flexible enough language on both the server-side script and the client-side script. It’s just a really good one to have handy, and as websites become more interactive/visually based, it’ll continue to expand and be popular. -- Ross

Javascript isn’t necessarily a programming language, but it’s becoming more popular and growing because it’s easier to learn than other languages. – Desi Dicheva

Node.js

While not a programming language exactly, Node.js has revolutionized how we compile and deploy websites that make them more efficient - Scott

Go

Amazon just released support for Go, and it’s becoming one to watch. It’s clean, scalable, and has the efficiency of a language like C++. Plus, Google uses it so it’s definitely one to have handy. - Ross

PHP

PHP has been insanely popular over the last couple of years. This is largely because Wordpress and shopping carts like WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Magento are all built with PHPO. - Desi

You can combine PHP with HTML to display dynamic elements on a page, and PHP integrates with many databases. - Elena Roig

JAVA

Amazon is built in JAVA; it’s one of the main programming languages. People should definitely know JAVA. It’s an object-oriented programming language but it’s safer than PHP. It’s harder for a site built in JAVA to be hacked compared to PHP. – Desi

Our developers definitely put thought into this list; we’ve got the group chats to prove just how intensive these discussions got. However, even with their years of expertise, this list is by no means comprehensive.