Getting Started with A-List Alternatives to PHP in 2023

Being rightfully open-source, speedy, cost-efficient and scalable – PHP has no fear of falling out. Released in 2004, and updated in 2015, PHP is well known for its better performance and interoperability. It eases building an MVP, is now being used along with Java to meet security requirements & high standards and is extremely suitable for IoT infrastructure solutions as PHP code can now simultaneously run several tasks in the same script. The emergence of PHP frameworks has further eased the way to faster development. But some options are available for those who wish to experiment with the programming language and still want their applications to perform equally well. Here are 10 such alternatives to PHP that can be tried for server-side development:

JavaScript

Although JavaScript is a library (vastly used for front-end development). It is used along with CSS and preferably along with any high-level programming language like PHP. It is open-source, works across platforms and is easy to code and maintain. Out of the various prevalent JavaScript frameworks, 5 most prevalent ones according to workplace adoption include AngularJS, ReactJS, Vue.JS, Ember.JS, and Backbone.JS.

Python

Keenly compared with Java in case of performance, Python is dynamically typed, interpreted language that is slightly slower than Java in various implementations, suitable for cross-platforms, adorned with machine learning libraries like Tensorflow and Pytorch; frameworks like Django and Flask work in backend; it has strong support for game development engines like Cocos and Padasd; Python code is well structured with proper indentation for ease of understanding. For all these reasons it is the best PHP alternative for server-side development.

Java

Java is an object-oriented, high-level programming language and de-facto language for Android app development (without forgetting Kotlin, which is soon catching up). What’s more, it supports cross-platform, has immutable strings and has deep relatively standard libraries. Java is compiled down to byte-code and subsequently run on virtual machines, by a separate program known as Javac. Java has several tools and libraries like Weka, Java-ML, MLlib, and Deeplearning4j, which are leveraged to solve most of the cutting edge machine learning problems. Although not particularly preferable for latency-sensitive applications, Java applications always stay ahead in performance with the help of a just-in-time compiler. Frameworks like Spring and JEE prefer Java for Server-Side development.

Ruby

Ruby on rails has drastically changed and evolved over the past few years. It now features active storage, Redis cache-store, HTTP/2 Early Hints, Credentials, Active Mailbox, Action ext, Parallel Testing, Webpack and still being simple and user-friendly. Based on the MVC framework, it is a go-to framework for many developers focusing on rapid prototyping and convention-over-convention pattern. Sinatra, Padrino, Hanami, Grape, Cuba, Roda, Ramaze, and NYNY are few other frameworks other than Rails.

Go

“Go” or Golang is a simple static type system, includes a runtime and garbage collection, and has dynamic interfaces and a standard library. It is easy to learn, modern, component-oriented, general-purpose programming language, well-structured, using strong programming features of C#. It has one very amazing IDE which is a very important factor in the development process.

C#

C# is an object-oriented, modern, general-purpose, programming language, designed for Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), which consists of the executable code and runtime environment allowing the use of various high-level languages on different computer platforms and architectures. Developers who are familiar with Java, C or C++ can find it intuitive, giving away to ASP.Net programming. 

Erlang

Erlang is a powerful alternative to PHP due to its concurrent functional programming designed specifically to handle multiple threads or processes and not utilizing CPU processing power simultaneously. Erlang programming language was used by some of the tech biggies recently like WhatsApp messengers, Goldman Sachs trading database, Amazon database Facebook back end for chat service, etc. Erlang suits well to web applications featuring near-stateless, one-call-response nature of RESTful service endpoints. Erlang eases outbuilding massively scalable soft-real-time systems with requirements on high availability. It is widely applicable in banking, e-commerce, telecom, computer telephony and instant messaging. Companies like Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook, WhatsApp, T-Mobile, Motorola, and Ericsson have found some interesting use cases of Erlang. Most popular open-source Erlang applications include The 3D subdivision modeler Wings 3D, The Ejabberd system, The CouchDB “schema-less” document-oriented database, the MochiWeb library that provides support for building lightweight HTTP servers powers services like MochiBot and MochiAds and RabbitMQ, an AMQP messaging protocol implementation.

Elixir

Elixir comes close to Ruby; as already discussed above, Ruby on Rails is prevalent as PHP alternative with its elegant syntax, fast development, many free libraries (gems) that can be used to resolve almost any task. Ruby is relatively slow as compared to other prevalent frameworks and programming languages. Besides this, it as well consumes considerable system resources and has a bad concurrent implementation. Coming to the context, Elixir is considerably fast and removes away almost all cons of Ruby as it is fast, lightweight and has that amazing concurrency. Elixir is familiar to Ruby, promises comparative development speed to Ruby development speed. Its code is compiled to Erlang byte code and runs by Erlang VM. This means Elixir inherits all the Erlang advantages. Being a functional language, Elixir does not have classes, it just has modules with functions. It has built-in support for concurrency, distribution, pattern matching, and fault tolerance and finds its applications in Banking, telephony, e-commerce, and mobile telephony. So it is being used by WhatsApp, Facebook, Yahoo, and Amazon, etc. It is also popular for the most famous game - League of Legends.

C++

As already discussed above, most of the programming languages are based on object-oriented programming concepts, notwithstanding its importance and wide acceptability for every programming type. C++ is one of the preliminary concepts after C, is still the basis of languages like Java and Android App Development, simultaneously. Although it might be difficult to deploy in its very crude state if developers try out and experiment with other available frameworks it can be fun to learn and practice. Although C++ is not a framework driven environment, and the choice depends upon the need of the project/programmer. But still in case one needs to build a game then Unreal Engine is good, and if one needs to make use of C++ within their Java or JavaScript applications then OpenMPI/OpenMP can be supporting frameworks. Overall, C++ can be used to do more interesting stuff in a very short amount of time. It is free, open-source, multi-platform and pretty well-documented. 

Rust

Rust programming language resolves two main problems: In case you are constrained by speed and memory consumption or by the complexity of the code, then Rust can be preferred for performance-constrained problems. Rust never forces a user to make use of fancy object representation with hidden classes, or use JIT, or GT as all such things trade away control for programmers’ convenience. It is a multi-paradigm system programming language that is focused on safety and safe concurrency. Being syntactically similar to C++, it is designed to provide better performance and memory.

Ratiocination

“The more we practice, the luckier we get”, applies to almost every business. The choice of a programming language depends upon the demand of the client, market requirements, and availability of the skills, hard work, and smart choices. And as you think like a paranoid optimist, you involve in scenario planning, you end-up practicing quite a bit.

As Web Development Company UAE looks for robust business solutions, they as well understand the need to practice what should be done in a given scenario. As websites play a very crucial role in transforming business and become a navigation tool to propel the audience, it is important to offer them the best and create a sense of demand. When the business gets that much ready to face, whatever happens, sense the upcoming need,  they eventually trace their way and create their luck by converting prospects into real-time clients.