Why each language has its own niche

A server language is chosen for the task, not for fashion. PHP, Python, Java, Go, Node.js and the rest each have their own strengths and pool of specialists.

“What should I write the server in?”

It’s the commonest question of beginners and clients, and the commonest wrong answer is “in the best one”. There’s no best language for a server, just as there’s no best tool: a hammer isn’t better than a screwdriver. Each language has its own age, its own makers, the tasks it was made for and an ecosystem of its own. Choosing a language isn’t choosing between “good” and “bad”. It’s choosing between different compromises.

So it helps to know why each language appeared. Below are nine: the ones servers are really written in today.

Nine languages and what they are for

PHP (1995) was made for the web and still does that job better than many. WordPress, Drupal, MediaWiki (the engine of Wikipedia) and Laravel are built on it, and in Russia 1C-Bitrix too. Its trumps: cheap hosting everywhere, the “one request, one process” model, and a huge number of specialists and ready-made solutions. Its weak spot is long connections (a chat), and the language carries the baggage of its early mistakes.

Python (1991) reads almost like English, so it’s quick to learn and quick to write. For the web it has Django (Instagram is built on it), Flask and FastAPI. Its main strength is data, analytics and neural networks, which are almost all written in Python, so when a site needs AI, it’s close at hand. It’s slower than many, but for most sites the speed of the language isn’t the bottleneck.

Ruby (1995) became famous through the Rails framework (2004), which taught the world to build web products in weeks, on the principle of “convention over configuration”. GitHub, Shopify and Basecamp are built on Rails. Today it’s less fashionable and specialists are fewer than for the big languages, but it’s still good for launching a product fast.

Java (1995) and C# (2000, Microsoft) became the languages of big corporations: strict typing, mature platforms (Spring, .NET), high reliability and many specialists. Banks, insurers and big portals often stand on them. The price is a high entry barrier and a heavy start for a project; for a business-card site it’s a cannon to shoot a sparrow.

Go (Google, 2009) was made for server work: a simple language that compiles fast, runs fast and does many things at once without effort. Docker and Kubernetes are written in it. It’s good for services where speed and easy operation matter.

JavaScript on the server, that is Node.js (2009), lets you write both the page and the server in one language and use the huge npm registry of packages. It’s good for prototypes, for live connections (chats, notifications) and when the team already writes JavaScript.

Elixir (2011, José Valim) runs on the Erlang virtual machine, which was made in the 1980s at Ericsson for telephone exchanges. There millions of calls go on at once, and the failure of one must not cut off the others. From its ancestors Elixir inherited an enormous number of light parallel processes and resilience to errors. Chats, notification systems and event streams are written in it (the messaging service of Discord is built that way). The price is a small community and few specialists.

Rust (Mozilla, 2010) is chosen when extreme speed and safe work with memory are needed: separate high-load parts of systems are written in it (at Cloudflare and Discord). Its entry barrier is the highest of the nine, and for an ordinary site it’s almost always overkill.

How to compare them

For a comparison it helps to take six criteria:

1. Project start: how fast you can get a working site.
2. Run speed: how many requests one machine handles.
3. Concurrency: how convenient it is to hold many connections at once.
4. Ecosystem: how many ready libraries, systems and answers to questions there are.
5. Hiring: how easy it is to find people, and what they cost.
6. Entry barrier: how hard it is to begin. We agree that the easier it is, the higher the score, so that a five means “good for the project” everywhere.

Hiring depends on where you are. Worldwide, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025 shows JavaScript (66% of respondents), Python (58%), Java (29%) and C# (28%) far ahead of PHP (19%), Go (16%) and Rust (15%), with Ruby (6%) and Elixir (3%) small. In Russia the picture is a little different: PHP, Java and JavaScript are easy to find there, and C# and Ruby are harder. The diagram below scores the hiring axis worldwide and lets you switch to the Russian market for comparison.

Pick two languages and look at their “radar”. The scores are the author’s judgments, not measurements, but the shape of the polygon shows how the languages differ:

First PHPPythonRubyJavaC#GoJavaScript (Node.js)ElixirRust Second PHPPythonRubyJavaC#GoJavaScript (Node.js)ElixirRust Hiring market WorldwideRussia, for comparison

PHP (total 23): sites on content management systems and cheap hosting. Well-known examples: WordPress, Drupal, Wikipedia (MediaWiki), early Facebook.

Go (total 22): simple fast services and infrastructure tools. Well-known examples: Docker, Kubernetes.

Scores run from 1 to 5, where 5 is better for a project (for the entry barrier it means “easy to start”). Hiring is judged worldwide, from what developers say they use in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, with the Russian market as an option to compare. These are the lesson author’s judgments, not measurements: the total doesn’t decide the choice, and your project may weigh the criteria differently.

Check yourself: why does Rust score highest for run speed, and yet almost nobody chooses it for a business-card site?

The speed of the language isn’t the bottleneck of a business card. The bottlenecks there are the network, the database and the time of development. The high entry barrier and the shortage of ready-made systems make Rust an expensive choice where its speed isn’t needed.

How to choose

Three rules cut out most bad decisions.

1. Start with the task, not the language. A site on a content management system, a shop, a chat and a service with calculations all need different things. For sites on WordPress or Drupal the question is settled in advance: it’s PHP. For a chat with thousands of connections it’s more likely Node.js, Go or Elixir.
2. Count the people. In a year the site will need somebody to fix it. A language that hundreds of people in your town write is cheaper than a language with a dozen specialists, even if the second is technically better. Look at your own market: ask local studios, job boards and meetups what they use.
3. Choose boring when you can. The speed of a language rarely decides a site’s fate. What decides is how fast you launched, how easy it is to maintain and whether you can find help. And boring, proven and widespread is a good choice.

And remember: a language isn’t forever. A project can start in one and move a part to another when the task changes. That’s why the practice asks you not only to choose but also to name the situation in which you would revisit the choice.

Practice

You’re on a site from 2022: servers are no longer bought but rented by subscription, and the language is chosen for the task. Take three languages from the list and weigh them on the six criteria for your project. You can take the scores from the radar or set your own: your project may shift the weight of the criteria. Work out the total yourself.

Then choose one and explain the choice. Not “I like it”, but “the project has such a section and such a form, so it needs this”. Say where you would look for specialists, and name the situation that would change the decision. That is three sentences, and they are worth more than the table.

What was wrong with 2022

In the 2000s people chose by language, not by task. “We’re a Java company” meant that even a business card of five pages was built on a heavy enterprise platform. “We’re on Ruby” meant admiration for the speed of development and bewilderment about why anyone needs others. By the 2010s a generation of developers had grown up for whom the language was a matter of belonging, and arguments about it looked like arguments about football clubs.

Today’s mature approach is more modest: a language is a tool chosen for the task, and new languages (Go, Rust, Elixir) have taken their niches without pushing out the old. PHP, whose death has been announced since the 2000s, still serves a large share of the sites in the world (W3Techs publishes the figure monthly, and the Wikipedia article on PHP in the sources keeps a recent summary).