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Editor’s note: Cloud-based applications should run smoothly on the cloud infrastructure and leverage the cloud capabilities. Read on to explore what programming languages and why ScienceSoft employs most often in cloud development and don’t hesitate to check our cloud app development offering if you want to build a highly available and cost-effective solution in the cloud.
The language that developers use for creating a cloud-powered application does matter as languages differ in structure, capabilities, and vendor and community support. In the article, I share ScienceSoft’s preferred programming languages for building in the cloud.
.NET
.NET is a development platform delivered and maintained by Microsoft, the vendor of Azure, one of the top cloud offerings. Most parts of the development platform are now open-source and cross-platform (e.g., .NET Core).
I think .NET is a perfect fit for creating cloud-based applications. Native support from Azure Cloud grants consistency and synergy. Extensive libraries and powerful tooling streamline and simplify the development process.
What I particularly like about using .NET for cloud development is exceptional performance and optimized computer power usage. The platform has good features to support concurrency, parallel algorithms, and composability, including modern language constructs like generics, Language Integrated Query (LINQ), and asynchronous programming.
Maxim Saplin, Head of .NET Development at ScienceSoft
Examples of .NET-powered cloud applications: Microsoft corporate clients – Exchange, SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Visual Studio.
If you’d like to see .NET capabilities in custom cloud development, you’re welcome to check ScienceSoft’s .NET projects:
- Development of custom billing software for a leading European marketplace.
- Development of the world’s largest PLM software.
Java
Java is a go-to choice for developing custom enterprise cloud applications. To my mind, the key reason for this is that Java is secure, stable, portable and scalable in terms of performance and execution speed. It offers powerful frameworks to support microservices, reactive programming and multi-cloud strategies (Spring Boot, Cloud Foundry, Akka, etc.).
I’m glad Java remains one of the most popular languages, and all the major clouds provide first-class support for it in their SDKs, which greatly simplifies development and enhances our capacities.
Even serverless architecture can be easily realized in Java today. With AOT (ahead-of-time) compilation for GraalVM and numerous microframeworks, you can efficiently address a long cold start and a big distributive size.
Artem Sinitsyn, Senior Java Developer at ScienceSoft
Examples of Java-powered cloud applications: Gmail, Hadoop platform, Confluence.
You can also check our recent cloud development projects where we’ve applied Java:
- Development of the back end for an innovative hotel self-service app.
- Implementation of the health image cloud storage.
Python
Python is one of the few highly suitable languages for manipulating and processing large data sets. Thus, I often recommend it as the best fit for cloud computing dealing with neural networks, machine learning, and streaming analytics systems. Naturally, Python has strong support from all major cloud providers (Azure 2.x runtime support previews of Python (version 3.6); AWS SDK for Python).
Examples of Python-powered cloud applications: Netflix, Pinterest, Reddit, Spotify, Instagram.
We’ve recently applied Python in the following projects:
- Implementation of a data analytics platform for a telecom company.
- Development of software for a wearable pet tracker managed via an iOS/Android app.
Node.js
Node.js is highly scalable and fast (running on Google JS engine). It is easy to code and can be used for end-to-end application development. With its evented, non-blocking, asynchronous communication pattern, Node.js helps applications efficiently handle a large number of connections.
Examples of Node.js-powered cloud applications: PayPal, Uber, NASA, Trello.
Golang
Golang was created to take advantage of multicore processes and cater to easy distributed cloud computing. It is a fast and simple language for server development due to advanced tools for concurrency (Goroutines) and parallelism management. Thus, major cloud providers actively support the language and contribute to its further development. Also, Golang has a powerful framework for robots, drones and IoT development – Gobot.
Examples of Golang-powered cloud applications: some of Uber services, Dailymotion, Twitch.
Which language do you need?
The best fit will mostly depend on your application’s size, architecture and specifics (real-time, big data, integrations). However, to make the final decision, you need to consider other things, including:
- What legacy software/code you’re to support?
- Who will develop your application (what is their proficiency in the field, who is available)?
If you’d like to get professional advice regarding the choice of the language for your cloud application, you’re welcome to turn to our cloud consultants.