Popular Backend Frameworks to Learn in 2024
Backend frameworks are technologies that help create more robust backend software and solutions. They are essential for robustness because they handle critical business logic, ensure security, and provide a solid basis for reliable back-end software and solutions.
Nowadays, the user experience delivered by an application determines its popularity and profitability in the long run. Hence, it becomes essential for developers to focus on both the front-end and back-end of the application. Typically, the users can see, touch and experience the front-end or user interface of the app directly.
In this post, we have shared a list of the top 10 most popular backend frameworks to learn in 2024 to take your programming career to the next level.
Brief Overview of Most Widely Used Back-end Web Frameworks
ASP.NET Core
Microsoft recently released ASP.NET Core 1.0 with several innovative features to simplify web and cloud application development, testing, and deployment.
Unlike its predecessor, ASP.NET Core shines with cross-platform support. Build web applications that run seamlessly on Windows, Linux, and macOS, giving your projects a wider reach. It integrates effortlessly with other Microsoft technologies like Visual Studio and Azure cloud services. This streamlined ecosystem can significantly boost your development efficiency, especially if you’re already familiar with the Microsoft environment.
The developers can integrate ASP.NET Core with several open-source web development tools while taking advantage of a robust integrated development environment (IDE) like Visual Studio.
ASP.NET Core is a mature framework with a large, active community. This translates to plenty of job opportunities, with businesses still seeking skilled ASP.NET developers. So, this must be on your list of learning plans for 2024.
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (RoR) is a widely used web application framework for Ruby programming languages. It supports several widely used software development paradigms, including MVC and emphasizes software testing. The plug-and-play functionality provided by RoR enables developers to customize the web application according to varying business requirements.
Programmers can further take advantage of the code library and scaffolding options provided by RoR to accomplish everyday web development tasks without writing additional code. They can also use RoR to create a prototype of the application and move quickly from planning to the project’s development phase.
The Ruby on Rails community is vibrant and supportive, offering a wealth of online tutorials, forums, and libraries (gems) to streamline development. You’ll never be short of help or resources when learning or tackling projects.
Django
Django is a hugely popular Python web application framework. Python enables developers to build web applications with concise, readable and reusable code. Also, Django supports the MVC design pattern. Hence, the developers can keep the business logic, user interface and application data separate. At the same time, they can take advantage of the built-in tools provided by Django to accomplish common web development tasks like site maps, user authentication, content administration, and Memcached.
Django further allows programmers to customize individual parts of the web application according to specific business requirements. Also, it provides several packages, a robust ORM system, and a dynamic admin interface.
Node.js
The JavaScript library enables web developers to write server-side code in JavaScript. Many developers use Node.js to write both client-side and server-side code in JavaScript. Node.js is also used widely by developers as part of MEAN Stack, MongoDB, Elegant.js, and AngularJS. However, Node.js is designed as a cross-platform runtime engine and executes code through Google’s V8 JavaScript engine.
It further enhances the execution speed of JavaScript code by executing commands in parallel through non-blocking functions and allowing programmers to run operations asynchronously. At the same time, Node.js comes with features to simplify common web development tasks like file system I/O, data streaming, binary data and networking.
Play Framework
The open-source web application framework is written in Scala. It enables developers to build feature-rich web applications by combining Java and Scala programming languages. As Play supports MVC design patterns, it becomes easier for developers to simplify web application development by separating business logic and user interface layers. Also, Play Framework’s non-blocking and stateless architecture enables developers to scale web applications without extra effort.
The developers can further assess the quality of the code continuously by availing of the built-in testing support and just hitting the refresh workflow of the Scala web framework.
Catalyst
Catalyst is a widely used Perl web framework. As it supports the MVC principle, it becomes easier for developers to build and maintain large web applications by keeping their user interface and business logic layers separated. Also, the developers can avail themselves of the ready-to-use plug-ins provided by Catalyst to accomplish a variety of web development tasks like user authentication, caching, and session management.
Catalyst comes with a lightweight test server and a robust database ORM while supporting multiple templating languages. The Perl web framework is further designed with features to keep common development tasks simple and clean.
Laravel
The PHP framework enables developers to accomplish common tasks like authentication, session management, routing and caching by writing expressive code. It further provides various tools to speed up the development of large and complex web applications. Also, it makes it easier for programmers to conduct the unit test to assess the impact of changes made to the code at various stages of development.
Laravel also comes with a Blade template engine that allows programmers to reduce performance overheads by writing plain PHP code in the templates. Version 5.3 of Laravel further comes with several new features like simplified API authentication and the option to add WebSockets to the application.
Phalcon
Phalcon is a modern PHP framework designed with a focus on speed. Phalcon is a PHP extension written in the C programming language, unlike other frameworks. So it consumes lower resources while delivering optimized performance. As Phalcon is loosely coupled, the programmers have the option to use the framework fully or its specific parts as glue components. They can further download and install the framework as a PHP module.
Phalcon further provides features to accomplish common tasks like database access, authentication, transaction, messaging, caching, queuing, template engine, form builder, and routing.
NestJS (TypeScript/Node.js)
If you’re looking to level up your backend development skills in 2024, NestJS (pronounced “nest jee ess”) is a framework worth considering. NestJS combines the power of Node.js with the advantages of TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript. This translates to several benefits:
Structured and Scalable Applications: NestJS enforces a clear modular architecture inspired by Angular. This structure makes complex projects easier to manage and maintain, especially as your application grows in size and features.
Type Safety with TypeScript: NestJS leverages TypeScript’s static typing, which helps catch errors early in the development process. This not only improves code quality but also reduces debugging headaches down the line.
Modern Development Practices: NestJS embraces dependency injection and other modern development principles. This promotes cleaner code, better testability, and a more maintainable codebase for you and your team.
Thriving Ecosystem and Community: NestJS boasts a growing and active community. This means you’ll have access to plenty of learning resources, libraries, and support to assist you on your development journey.
NestJS is well-suited for building modern applications using a microservices architecture. This allows you to break down complex functionalities into smaller, independent services that are easier to develop, deploy, and scale.
Yii Framework
Yii is one of the high-performance PHP frameworks available in the market. It is easier for programmers to reduce the development time by keeping the business logic and user interface separate as it supports the MVC pattern. At the same time, they can easily boost the application’s performance by availing of powerful caching support provided by Yii. Yii further helps developers to work with AJAX more efficiently.
It further makes user input collection through forms more secure by providing validators, widgets and helper methods. Also, it comes with features to protect the application from SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. The developers can further use Yii to perform unit tests and functionality testing without extra time and effort.
CakePHP
The PHP framework features help programmers create prototypes and build applications rapidly. The developers can avail the code generation feature of CakePHP to develop application prototypes easily. At the same time, they can further avoid writing longer lines of code by availing of built-in features for database access, authentication, validation, translation, and caching. The users can additionally start using CakePHP simply after setting the database up. CakePHP further guides programmers to efficiently handle all aspects of the application while supporting the MVC design pattern.
Leminas Framework (Zend Framework)
Along with being a mature PHP framework, Zend is also being used by several large websites. The open-source framework enables programmers to create websites by using object-oriented code. The modular structure of Zend further makes it easier for users to combine its building blocks with other frameworks and libraries.
As Zend is designed as a collection of classes, the programmers can load the required components as individual libraries. Also, they can use ZendService to access popular web services by implementing client-side libraries. However, many programmers feel that Zend has a more demanding learning curve. Zend still comes with features to speed up the development of large-scale web applications.
Overall, web application developers can choose from various backend web frameworks. But then, competent developers always opt for a backend framework that complements the preferred programming language and meets all project needs. The developers must evaluate the pros and cons of each framework according to their skills and needs.
