Thinking about doing server sided development, what tools should I use?

[Icey!]

I've been thinking about trying server sided development for a while which is mainly related to the web but also other areas too like game development!

Some languages I've considered are: TypeScript (with Node.js or Bun), Rust (Rocket), and Ruby (on Rails).

Reasons why I considered them:

Rust: I don't really have the best hardware for hosting and thought about choosing a fast language to prevent having to pay for better hardware Rust fits that criteria while also providing other advantages like memory safety. I'm not sure if it's logical to have that mindset towards servers but better safe than sorry.

Ruby (On Rails): This is the "simplest" language for web development, since I don't have much experience with servers I thought it would be reasonable to learn it that way. This also happens to be the language Neocities was programmed in.

TypeScript: I feel that this a middle ground between the easy to use and performant languages, I don't really have much else to say about this language other than I heard that it's better than JavaScript and Node.js allows you to do it on the server but Bun is faster but experimental.

For others like PHP, I don't know what to say about them.

[Melooon]

I use Node.js for most of my server stuff these days; I used to use Java Servlets but those were hell! I find Node.js very fun to work with, but only because I know JavaScript really well. The HUGE number of npm packages for Node.js are also really handy.

PHP was one of my first languages and I didn't touch it for many years before getting into working on this forum, it's not as bad as I remember but debugging is a pain because its harder to dig up the logs 

I used to use TypeScript at my last job; it's just a wrapper language; e.g. so you write in TypeScript and then a program converts your typescript to JavaScript. It's handy if you have VERY large projects and a big team because it stops people messing up types on variables; but for individual projects, it's not really necessary unless you want the experience for your CV.

I've only done a tiny bit of Ruby, it's a nice language, so I'm not sure why it's fallen out of popularity.

I think they are all good choices for basic server-side features; it depends on which one you enjoy using the most! 

[Necrosia]

Probably a very unpopular opinion for hobby dev but I use C# 

You can use it for anything server side and games since its the language of Unity. To date I havent find something that compares to the ultimate dream experience that is using C# on Visual Studio but I know that my preference for the language is an acquired taste so no need to attack me for that 

.net (the framework of C#) now allows to compile C# to javascript or use them together which is a dream come true.

I have been working profissionaly with typescript for some years now but I dont like to use it for personal stuff, I really dislike the way the server code interacts with the frontend and how everything has to be an external library but on the other hand I find it very beginers friendly and cheap to get started, I consider it the modern equivalent of php for ease of access and use.

[Icey!]

So use javascript instead of typescript? What are senarios where typescript is better or not?

[lime360]

there is cgi, which appears to be the first server-side technology ever

[Memory]

Are you suuuuure you don't want to use PHP? :P
It's actually pretty great and very accessible. It just has a bad reputation, partly due to how prolific it once was.

Probably a very unpopular opinion for hobby dev but I use C# 

I actually love C#, but I've never used it as a server langue. I just did a bit of app development years ago. I fully expected it to take over the world with how easy Microsoft made it to port apps to UWP, but it somehow never caught on.

there is cgi, which appears to be the first server-side technology ever

I only ever used cgi to install a news feed on my early sites. Way back before I could even comprehend Javascript. It was basically magic to me.

[Icey!]

Are you suuuuure you don't want to use PHP? :P
It's actually pretty great and very accessible. It just has a bad reputation, partly due to how prolific it once was.

A while ago I saw a lot of negativity around the language so I didn't consider it when making this topic. Now seeing people say that it's better now while considering that there are a lot of pre-made tools (Wordpress, phpbb, etc) and there exist alot of cheap + cheap php hosters I might consider learning it as my first "server sided language". I'm still open to what you have to say about other languages (or just talk about PHP).

[Memory]

huh, what am I reading...

did you tried XAMPP? https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html it has linux versions on there
in case you don't want to use that and you're using a debian-based distro just do a sudo apt-get install php7.4 php7.4-fpm nginx (if php7.4 isn't listed in your distro then use sudo apt search php7) and then go to the nginx configuration (/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default) and add this code for enable php on your webserver

Code

       location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
                default_type  application/octet-stream;
        }