Programming languages vs Frameworks vs Stacks

Here we are discussing programming languages, frameworks and stacks.

Software development in the context of this book means building an application that is used in the web browser. Or, in some cases, on your phone as an installed “app”.

While traditional applications, also known as Desktop Applications, may still have their use in some places, that’s not what the majority of companies are building anymore. (Yes, Adobe and Microsoft are still delivering desktop applications to be installed on your computer).

For the sake of this book, we are talking about Cloud-hosted applications.

Many of the programming languages existed a long time before web was popular, and was somewhat grown from that history in to become more “web-friendly”.

It’s very different to code a desktop application in comparison to a web application. A web application is not a website, even though it works similar. 

Some of the most popular programming languages include Python, JavaScript, Java, C#, C, C++, Go, R, Swift and PHP. When it comes to coding web applications, Python and JavaScript are widely used.

Larger ones usually use .Net (C#), Java or PHP. Mobile applications are usually written in Swift (iOS) or Kotlin (Android), but this is not always the case.

Read more in "The CTO Playbook" available on Amazon/Kindle.