How to choose a programming language for a Project: Main Tips

How often do you come across a situation where the clients don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly they want? The situation where they describe only the main concept of the future product and its basic functionality? 

Well, let’s be honest, this is a common scenario. While some clients prefer to conduct their own independent research on which language and framework are better for the product, most of them leave it to the software company to choose.

Still, the language for a new project should be chosen only after a series of negotiations with the client. There are a lot of factors that will affect your final choice — the platform, budget, deadlines, etc. To make the right decision when building a development strategy, you must also consider the expert opinion of the developers, technicians, engineers — all those involved in the process.

This is not as simple as it seems. There is a large number of different languages ​​created for various tasks, and it is hardly possible to choose the only right option. How not to make a mistake and pick the tool that fits both the development company and the client?

Choosing the right Platform

The choice of a platform depends on the customer needs — the client may need a cross-platform application or a native mobile version, a website or a desktop app. In some cases the choice is obvious. For example, a taxi service provider may not need its own website and, especially, a desktop application. Instead, an easy-to-use mobile app may be the best option for them. However, less specific products usually require both a mobile and a web application. And this is where the client should make a decision based on the budget.

For mobile development

For mobile development, it is recommended to consider Java for Android apps, and Objective-C or Swift — for iOS apps. However, a rare mobile app is designed exclusively for a single segment of the mobile market. 

Most businesses aim to cover both operating systems when developing the app. If the company has a limited budget, but still wants their product to be available to both Android and iOS users, Facebook’s React Native might be a good choice. React Native will allow you to create a product for both operating systems, significantly reducing the costs and engineering efforts.

For website development

As for website development, the list of languages isn’t just huge, it is almost endless. You should, therefore, focus on the specifics of the project and the market that it will cover. You should clearly understand the vastness of the product’s functionality, capabilities, and complexity. 

Obviously, you will need WordPress to develop a regular content-based site. But today, it is no longer a popular request. Magento and PHP-based OpenCart are suitable for e-commerce products. If you need to develop a large, responsive, agile website that will include a lot of features and data to store, then it is better to pick popular solutions like JavaScript. The tech stack is very extensive here, so you will definitely find the perfect solution.

Development deadlines 

This point is very important, and for a reason. Both the client and the development company must understand when the product will be ready for release, and when the product’s maintenance stage will start off. The faster you start the project, the more time you will have for further improvements. 

The choice of a programming language here is absolutely not obvious since everything depends on the essence of the project. However, you can use pre-built applications to reduce development time. You can conduct a code review and make the necessary changes.

Community support

You might think that this is a less significant aspect when choosing a programming language for the project. But this is not true. In fact, a large community can provide you with support at all stages of the project development. They can introduce you to a huge number of solutions and problems that you will definitely encounter in the future. So you won’t need to spend a lot of time searching for a single resolution to your problem.

Speaking of a vast community, Java, JavaScript, and C# immediately come to mind. These languages ​​are the most popular and demanded today, they have a huge number of fans on GitHub and Stack Overflow.

Conclusion

To summarize, we can say that the choice of a programming language for your next project is always an extremely individual case. So, the main selection criteria are the specifics of a particular product and available resources. Nevertheless, you can always distinguish the leaders that, in most cases, meet all of today’s necessary standards — Java, JavaScript, Python, C++. 

Mind, however, that the choice isn’t always about the features, it is also about the social aspect. In addition to the tech ecosystem of the language, elements like community vastness and the developers’ accessibility are worth your notice.