Web Directions

Back end development languages and systems

• Server Hardware
• Server OS and Web Servers
• Databases
• Back end Programming lan­guages and Frameworks

In our final sec­tion, we asked about server side lan­guages, frame­works and tech­nolo­gies respon­dents used. It included ques­tions about server hard­ware, server oper­at­ing sys­tems, web servers, data­base sys­tems, and back­end pro­gram­ming lan­guages and frameworks.

Server Hardware

When asked “What type of hard­ware do your sites run on?”, 35% responded “Dedicated servers man­aged by you or your com­pany”, 30% shared servers, 15% “Dedicated co-​​located servers”, while 5% said “don’t know”.

Server OS and Web Servers

Linux and Unix dom­i­nate the server side oper­at­ing sys­tems used, with 59% and 17% respec­tively, while Windows weighs in at 28%. Perhaps sur­pris­ingly, Mac OS X is used as the server side oper­at­ing sys­tem by nearly 6% of respondents.

As to be expected, Apache and IIS dom­i­nate the web server mar­ket, with Apache at 69% and IIS at 23%. As with the oper­at­ing sys­tem fig­ures, this is a much greater dis­crep­ancy than between these servers and oper­at­ing sys­tem than is gen­er­ally reported by sur­veys like Netcraft’s (which puts Apache at around 48% and IIS at 33%). Lighthttpd came in at 5.5%, while Google’s GWS is very lightly used by com­par­i­son with other surveys.

It needs to be kept in mind that server soft­ware and oper­at­ing sys­tem sur­veys like Netcraft’s typ­i­cally mea­sure mar­ket share in terms of sites served, where this sur­vey is essen­tially per devel­oper. As such, any com­par­i­son between mar­ket share from those stud­ies and this are prob­a­bly of lit­tle mean­ing­ful value.

Databases

When asked “What data­base sys­tems do you use?”, only 3.4% of respon­dents replied “none” — further empha­siz­ing the increas­ing move away from sta­tic page based sites to dynamic sites.

Among the data­base sys­tems nom­i­nated by respon­dents, MySQL dom­i­nates with over 70% of devel­op­ers using it. Microsoft’s Microsoft SQL Server has a 22% mar­ket share among respon­dents, PostgreSQL 10%, and Oracle 9%. Other data­bases nom­i­nated by respon­dents include SQLite (around 1.5%), with a hand­ful using CouchDB, Filemaker, and Access.

Back end Programming lan­guages and Frameworks

When asked “Which pro­gram­ming lan­guages do you use?”, only 3.5% of respon­dents replied “none”, once again empha­siz­ing the increas­ingly dynamic nature of web sites we’ve see from the high per­cent­age of devel­op­ers who use JavaScript, and data­base systems.

Of the lan­guages nom­i­nated by respon­dents, PHP dom­i­nates, at 63%. JavaScript comes in at a sur­pris­ingly high 55%. ASP​.NET is used by17% of respon­dents, Python 15%, Ruby, despite it’s cur­rent high pro­file, 14%, ASP and Java 12%, and Coldfusion at 7%.

Of “other” lan­guages, a hand­ful of respon­dents use ActionScript, with few other lan­guages being used by more than one or two respon­dents. As with all our other ques­tions, the full details are avail­able to download.

The use of these lan­guages increas­ingly goes hand in hand with a frame­work. These frame­works are lan­guage spe­cific — and for some lan­guages, such as PHP, there may be more than one widely used framework.

Interestingly, 29% of respon­dents answered that they use no frame­work for back end devel­op­ment. Compare this with only about 5% of respon­dents who use JavaScript but who don’t use frameworks.

Of those who do use frame­works, 13% use Ruby on Rails (despite Ruby being quite a way down the list of lan­guages, this is the sin­gle most used frame­work. This may be due to the fact that most Ruby devel­op­ers likely started using the lan­guage because of the Rails framework.)

Other com­monly used frame­works include Django, the Python Framework (11%), the Zend Framework (the most com­monly used PHP frame­work, at 6.4%, but used by only 10% of PHP devel­op­ers in this sur­vey), and CakePHP, a close sec­ond to Zend among PHP frame­works at 6%.

Other frame­works men­tioned include the Java frame­work Struts (about 2%), the PHP frame­work Code Igniter, at about 1%, and Spring for Java at about 1%. A num­ber of con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems, such as Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal, which while not tech­ni­cally speak­ing frame­works, are increas­ngly being used in ways sim­i­lar to them.

Interestingly, just under 20% of respon­dents said that they use inter­nally devel­oped frameworks.

The dis­par­i­ties between the use of libraries and frame­works for JavaScript and back end devel­op­ment are cer­tainly inter­est­ing. Not just the high per­cent­age of respon­dents who don’t use frame­works for back end devel­op­ment, but do for JavaScript devel­op­ment, but also the high pro­por­tion of those who use their own frame­works for back end devel­op­ment, and yet the near absence of inter­nally devel­oped frame­works for front end development.

Next

We’ll wrap up with some con­clu­sions, and try to get a sense of the state of the web at the end of 2008.