In the first contact with every application and website, we see the front-end. Its high quality plays a very important role in the success of your digital product. The variety of front-end programming languages can make it difficult to choose the perfect language for your project or product. In the following article, we will introduce the most popular and reliable languages in 2022 to help you make the right choice.
What is a Front-End Development?
In simple words, the front-end can be defined as part of the application that is “seen” by us, users. It’s responsible for how users interact with the application. The back-end handles the data behind the application. The front-end and back-end programmers together can create a transparent and properly functioning application. All in all, the page layout, all graphics and text – the front-end draws from the back-end, thanks to which we get the final image on the screen of our phones or monitors.
What does a front-end developer do?
The main task in the work of a Front-end Developer is to check what the website will look like. It is especially important that the devs have to verify how the website will behave in various situations. The Front-end developer is responsible for the application’s graphical interface and connects it with backend applications. To create an intuitive and clear interface, a professional Front-end developer must have extensive knowledge of how to connect all parts of the application with each other.
The frontend technology stack is a very dynamic environment that is constantly developing and changing. Connecting all parts of the application translates into the need for cooperation and interaction not only with your own team but also with others. Knowledge of UX/UI work is an additional advantage of every Front-end developer because cooperation with specialists in this field is an everyday reality. Greater awareness of this issue will allow you to understand how a user-friendly application should work. Learn more about the role of a front-end developer here.
The Best Front-end Languages to Use in 2022
The variety of languages makes it difficult to decide on the best technology for your product. Let’s look into the most popular front-end technologies in 2022.
1. JavaScript
It is by far the most popular programming language in the world. It first appeared in 1995 and has grown steadily ever since. Over 97% of websites use JS on the client-side for web page behavior, often incorporating third-party libraries. All major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute the code on users’ devices. It’s an object-oriented language like Visual Basic. Object-oriented languages are widely used for characteristics such as polymorphism, which allows an object to take many forms. There are many JavaScript frameworks you can work with as well.
The advantages of this language are certainly:
- offloading the server by reducing the amount of data transferred between the hosting and the user,
- simple and intuitive code syntax,
- universality, thanks to which the JS code allows you to perform many actions on the page, starting from changing the font color and ending with advanced operations that make the page interactive,
- continuous development of libraries and interfaces.
Disadvantages of JS:
- ambiguous interpretation of the code by browsers may cause different code effects in various browsers,
- the high popularity and versatility of JS mean that many developers abuse it and implement JS code also where it doesn’t work best, and this can cause complications.
1.1. React
React is actually a JavaScript library used to build interfaces or anything that allows users to interact with machines. Created by Facebook while looking for a way to build dynamic yet highly efficient interfaces.
React’s pros:
- easy debugging due to React’s simplicity leaves little room for errors, and you can debug before executing your code,
- painless SEO – beneficial for the website indexing algorithm used by Google thanks to its fast rendering and lightness,
- open-source with many users, which makes it easier to solve problems.
Cons of React:
- a high pace of development forces developers to constantly renew their knowledge,
- incomplete documentation that does not reflect all updates.
1.2. Vue.js
Vue.js (commonly referred to as Vue) is an open-source front-end JavaScript’s framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications. It was created by Evan You, and is maintained by him and the rest of the active core team members. It is pretty regularly updated and it is one of the most popular frameworks in 2022.
The benefits of Vue.js are:
- detailed documentation facilitating the understanding of particular functions of the framework,
- Open Source software that allows developers to develop and adjust the framework to their needs,
- low weight and a perfect optimization,
- easy to learn,
- simplicity.
The drawbacks of Vue.js:
- difficulties in working with iOS Safari,
- a limited number of plugins.
1.3. Angular
Angular is also a framework, it was created in 2009 by Google. This superhero framework is based on TypeScript which we will describe below. It is great for building highly interactive web applications.
Strengths of Angular:
- detailed documentation allowing the developer to obtain the necessary information,
- high server performance.
Weaknesses of Angular:
- slow page rendering,
- migration problems that arise when upgrading from an older version to a new one.
1.4. JQuery
It’s actually a JavaScript library that makes it easy to manipulate elements and events in an HTML document. JQuery allows the user to write less code and increases its compatibility for multiple platforms and browser versions.
JQuery’s assets:
- simplicity,
- flexibility.
Liabilities of JQuery:
- deteriorates the performance of websites and applications,
- a decline in popularity in favor of Angular JS, Vue.js, React.
2. TypeScript
TypeScript is a front-end programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language. TypeScript is designed for the development of large applications and trans-compiles to JavaScript. As TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, existing JavaScript programs are also valid TypeScript programs.
TypeScript may be used to develop JavaScript applications for both client-side and server-side execution (as with Node.js or Deno). There are multiple options available for trans-compilation. Either the default TypeScript Checker can be used, or the Babel compiler can be invoked to convert TypeScript to JavaScript.
Pros of TypeScript:
- thanks to code typing, it is even easier to understand than the one created in JavaScript,
- TypeScript is a component of many modern web projects, therefore knowing it makes it easier to use new tools.
Cons of TypeScript:
- requires programming tools,
- difficult to edit with CMS.
3. Python
Although it’s not the newest, Python is still one of the most versatile programming languages. Python can be used for data science, web development, and scripting and automation. Like JavaScript, it also enjoys tremendous support from the community and has many useful frameworks, libraries, and tools that can help you build a web application quickly.
Highs of Python:
- Python is platform independent, so it works mostly on any platform for which a Python interpreter is available.
- The Python interpreter frees the memory allocated to the program and unused by itself, which allows for the shortening of the code and prevents errors related to the premature release of the memory that is still needed.
- One of the best features of Python is the numerous packages available. With the Full Python runtime, you have access to a very long list of your favorite Python libraries to build your web apps.
- Call server-side functions from the browser are one of the greatest advantages of Python. In traditional web-dev, calling from the browser to the web server is a pain. You have to set up a URL route, smush all your data into JSON, set up the AJAX request, asynchronously get a response…so much work! With Anvil, you just call a function. Add a decorator to any function, then just call the function from browser code. Pass Python objects as arguments; return Python objects. Done!
Lows of Python:
- low efficiency and speed.
4. Elm
One of the youngest front-end programming languages is Elm. It is a functional language that we compile into JavaScript. Whether you create websites or web applications, Elm allows you to create using high-quality and simple tools.
Elm’s advantages:
- a language is highly accessible to novice programmers,
- Elm’s user interface language is scalable and less error prone.
Elm’s disadvantages:
- lots of Code,
- lack of Documentation and libraries,
- JSON decoders and encoders.
5. WordPress
WordPress holds almost 65% market share for content management systems on websites whose CMS is known. This is about 41% of all websites. The closest competitor – Shopify – is powering only 3.4% of the sites. The gap is enormous! Like it or not, WordPress’s market share is still growing, and it shows no signs of slowing down, so is the popularity of this language.
Pros of WordPress:
- relatively less expensive website development,
- ease of optimization – learn our tips for optimize a WordPress website with free tools,
- search engine optimization is almost automated in 100%
- numerous plugins – there are over 54,000 of them at the moment so the choice is wide.
Cons of WordPress:
- vulnerability is a great drawback of WordPress. Being an open-source platform, it’s attractive to potential hackers. To mitigate this risk, again, it’s always good to be knowledgeable in choosing plugins and themes for your WordPress site; always assess the quality of a plugin and install them with caution,
- speed – you need a lot of work to speed up your website on WordPress.
6. HTML and CSS
Although HTML and CSS are not typical programming languages, they form the basis of a web environment. HTML handles the functionality of the website, and CSS is responsible for what the website looks like. Knowledge of them both is necessary to become a Front-end Developer. HTML is technically not a programming language, but it is a markup language and is the building block of a website.
CSS is a style sheet language that is used to define the presentation of certain web documents written in a markup language, usually HTML. Along with JavaScript and HTML, CSS is the backbone of the web.
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As you can see, the front-end is a very complex environment. Each of the programming languages presented above has its own advantages, unique features, but also some kind of inconvenience. When choosing the right language, you should carefully analyze all the features of the languages and try to match them to your product. Trends in front-end development are highly dynamic as well, so if you have more questions, don’t hesitate to contact our top tech experts!
