There's a reason many universities start with Java- it has strict rules and lays out code in a straightforward (if excessively-boiler-plate-heavy) way. For a beginner, Java is an excellent way to learn the fundamentals of programming before taking off the training wheels and continuing in more flexible, less-syntactically-rigorous direction like Python or JavaScript.

Sticking to a language before moving on is a common goal. However, in reality you are going to transition as you find languages that better suit you or your organization's requirements. Start with Java, not because it is optimal for your end goals, but because it will teach you what you like and dislike about programming and because your instructor is more familiar with it. That will give you a valuable perspective and allow you to make a more informed decision later.

There are many ways to solve problems in different languages, but the "best" language pragmatically is the one that you feel most comfortable using. In that respect, programming is like woodworking- you want to let the tool do the work. If there is another language that is "better" objectively but more difficult or confusing to you, you will counteract the anticipated benefits by having to struggle to write code.

The only way to solve this problem while avoiding opinions and tastes is to objectively look at what you are trying to build.

Thus the most efficient part of your question is your last sentence: you want to build medical software and medical mobile apps.

In that case, the answer is definitely Java, as is for all "real" software projects.

Python is good for data science, in other words for statistics. Its other competitive advantage is that it is easy to learn for beginners, but that would be a bad reason to use it for a "real" software project.

JavaScript is a mess you don't want to get into. The major reason why it's popular is that many people learn it first, because its very basic features are easy to learn, although they don't get you far, and because it used to have exclusivity on the web. But in reality it will make your life a lot harder after a few weeks, without any benefit. I know I'll get criticisms for that, but I stand fully by this position.

try with python because easy ... its good for u when u are learning basic's and they have many library that help's u with mobile app and desktop application but it is not the best ... when u are learn programming will with python then start with js basic's and then (react native) or flutter and also u can use java for mobile development bur i recommend first choices ..and for Desktop application java is have an amazing library (java fx ) for this type of application's and C# is one of most powerful language's for software development . good luck

Since you're already taking a CS course which involves Java, I would recommend you to keep learning it. Java's statically typed & OO nature forces you to learn a lot of important yet common programming fundamentles. C++, C# and Java type languages also force you write code more carefully (you have to think about the data types on your own and even allocate/de-allocate memories [C++ pointers]). That's why colleges prefer it as go to language for teaching CS concepts.

On the other hand, JS, Python and other such languages are dynamic in nature and hence, easy to learn. But you can't learn certain concepts (polymorphism, abstract classes, diamond problem etc) using these languages. So it makes sense to stick with Java in your case.

While I've seen many people recommend Java (and I agree with them), I think you can learn both. But it depends on how much time you got. I recommend you first learn Java. Then python will be easy to learn, and focus mainly on modules for graphs. The reason why I recommend to learn both is because python is much better and easier to code about statistical analysis. But again do this only if you have time to just learn them.

If your project doesn't have anything to do with statistics and data analysis (I'm pretty sure you do though), learn only java. Also if you are wondering why I never mentioned JavaScript (JS), it's because i really don't recommend it. JS is much harder to learn and requires a lot of lines of code to do simple things.

My advice to anyone learning to program is to not obsess on the language.. You SHOULD learn all languages.. Same as learning human spoken languages - the more you learn, the more ways your mind can interpret a new problem set. Learning them at the same time isn't a big deal (just like growing up in a bilingual home). Your language and your software stack are guaranteed to change 3 times in your career. Don't assume you're going to choose the "right one". And you wont waste any time learning one you never wind up using.

As a person who works on linux and OSX desktops, I have a personal bias against working for companies and software stacks that require C# or Visual Studio. But this is not due to their technical merits, but instead the OS as a platform condusive to efficient CLI toolchains and container management. But aside from that, I can use vi/IntelliJ-suite to write most languages, so language isn't a real concern. If you're windows bound, pretty much everything is available to you (through VMs and docker).

Ideally you do at least SOME full stack development learning. This means you'll need javascript, and thus nodejs would be a good stack to learn. If you ultimately like gaming or 3D, you might need C# and certainly python.

Any AI (which is a hot employment topic for the forseeable future) would like python skillz.

I personally love Java (and Android's Kotlin varient) for it's very very well designed multi-threaded libraries. go and rust are newer and thus do a slightly better job at this, but due to the open-source nature of java and editors that auto-reveal function call source code, it's very easy to learn how vendors implemented MT code and various other algorithms. Python should be equally "open" to 3rd party library review (and thus again how they solve complex problems), though a lot of times, I see python resorting to compiled C-libraries (and thus the cost to crack open the code and or trace through the code becomes too burdensome to bother).

Since your instructor is using Java, i'd start with Java. If you want to get into mobile development, I'd check out flutter / dart. Good luck!

Although java seems to be a good fit for you. It is a cumbersome language to get started out. It will be far easier for you to learn Python and stick with it long term. This is due to the fact you will be easily able to google things for python and you will spend less time learning the language, and more time using it to do what you want.

Making mobile apps is easier with Java due to the fact that google does not directly support app building with python. If this is your biggest priority stick with Java.

Javascript: This language is the best language to learn if you are making a website. However, for easy of use you can do all the database access stuff with python. And send back the data to your website. Javascript is also another cumbersome language in my opinion.

Each language has its use. If I were In your situation, I would choose the language that's easy to start with.

It would be great if you first go with Java. It could give you complete understanding of programming concepts. Such as data types. Later you can move to Python , which is great for data processing and Machin learning stuff.

There is always trade off between them. If you want to make mobile app JavaScript is better. I suggest start the one you feel more close and learn all of them :) You are quite young you have enough time for them.

I think that if you plan on sticking around enterprise systems and Microsoft, you should definitely get into some PowerShell. Basically anything you do via Active Directory, you should try mirroring it in PowerShell. It’s an easy one to learn, and it’s easy to follow that into Azure CLI. I was in the same boat as you — Did Helpdesk/System Administration for 10 years. PowerShell got me out.

I would also recommend PowerShell! Since I started learning PowerShell, a lot of possibilities opened up for me, I even became a PowerShell MVP. Since PowerShell Core/6/7 it has gotten a lot of interest in the Linux community and I love it for it's flexibility and possibilities only limited by your imagination ;) Check out the community dashboard to see the current usage https://aka.ms/PSGitHubBI, check out the PowerShell docs at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/overview?view=powershell-7, especially the "Learning PowerShell" section and feel free to contact me for further questions!

PS: Just to be complete on this, I also use Python, but in a very different scope. Python in my opinion is the best for data analytics related tasks or even whole production (web) applications (e.g. with Django). PowerShell is great for automation, orchestration and all the little tasks that makes your everyday life easier.

Definitely PowerShell. While you can do network related stuff with python, powershell gives you an in-depth understanding of various parts of the internet. This is because you manually execute each and every step, while in high end languages, you just use 1 or 2 commands. While powershell might take a bit more time, it will be really useful to understand networking and will give you a considerably high boost in terms of your career too.

I would recommend learning to use both python & power shell (plus Linux/WSL) by using them to do aspects of your current work better/faster/easier. You will definitely benefit from reading https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/python/scripting.

I would suggest taking a look at https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ - with a little thought I am sure that there are aspects of your current role that you can simplify or enhance by following the suggestions & doing so will give you valuable experience and may result in offers of more interesting roles growing from your current one.

Hello, how are you, my friend, I needed help learning Python. If you can help me, I will be very grateful to you.

I would say go for Node.js since you probably would only build a REST API that would talk to the frontend and some communication with the database.

On the other hand, Laravel is a much heavier framework that follows MVC pattern. Since you don't need the V in the MVC of Laravel. You can go for a straight Express that just handles the API request and return a response.

Hello Varun S,

Project-1 : If the Laravel part is an API, you should check Flutter or Quasar Framework for your frontend in order to reduce the development time and process.

First thoughts: * As a beginner you need to understand concepts first, all languages out there are great, each has it's own philosophy, each is better suited for a specific situation. Learn concepts first, do something, then you will understand the differences between them and why one should be chose over another for a task * As a project manager you want your project to come to an end. You will get lost in all the different solutions out there (and it's good), but don't get lost too far. Very often I see people getting lost in those debates and never achieving things, like someone writing a book that would still be choosing the font 6 months after (we've all done that it's ok, but we have to realise it)

Chances are your project can be equally good on any different stacks. I heard an interview of someone from Uber who said something like they started with python, went to node, went back to python and went to go, and with micro-services now they can have all of them all-together.

Last remark: from what I know Laravel is a framework for PHP, so it IS PHP. Just like Symphony for PHP, Express for Node.js, Koa for Node.js, Flask for Python ...

Now to answer your question :

• PHP has a big community, it is great and easy to start with, and you will definitely will learn real object oriented structure
• Node.js has a big community too, don't worry finding help will be as easy. It is less easy to start with but in my point of view it is a lot easier to keep on going with it on a long run. Why ? Because it's very easy to run a new project, and it executes javascript. How is it good ? Because chances are that your front will also be using javascript (React.js / View.js are crazy good). Thanks to that you will be able to master the language better because you will use it all day (and at first mastering one language is more valuable than barely knowing two) and you won't have to switch languages in your head when you code. And communication between front and back will be in json ... Which is crazy close to javascript.

Alexander is right, if you go with PHP take your time first to do things by yourself like building your own MVC, the benefit is huge and the risk is to never really be able to understand what's happening on a deeper level. (at some point you can switch to a framework though). He's also right on choosing a strongly typed language, problem is javascript is not. This is why, if you choose node, when you start being confident, add typesccript.

Hope it helps, good luck

Short answer, if it's a web project (and I guess it is) go with PHP and you can integrate NodeJs services later.

@adzaria (Ezra Fayet) gave a great answer and I'd like to emphasize the first part: As a beginner you need to understand concepts first. For me that means to understand the web, how servers and requests work, APIs and few others.

Now, I'd like to add few things so, this is the long answer:

Why PHP?

• Everyone knows about the community - PHP is way older so you will find lots of resources and I am not only talking about learning - also lots of helpful tools and packages
• PHP is great for OOP - not perfect, but with PHP7 got great - and if you are a beginner you want to know good OOP for your future. Let's say JavaScript's OOP is a bit strange; I will not get into details but, let's say "it's not by the book". You can still learn JavaScript for your front-end

Why not Python? Python got popular because of AI - don't use PHP for AI and don't use Python for web applications. I can elaborate a lot here but I guess you get the point.

Why not NodeJs?

• NodeJs got popular because of sockets - and it works great, but as a service
• Try to find a good and affordable hosting for NodeJs. How about for Python?
• I would not ignore the security issues that it had and could appear. PHP is older and, therefore, wiser :)

Now, about a framework... is this a learning project or something that you need to do fast? My advice is to start a small project and not use any framework. However, you can use packages and inspire from a framework's architecture - Laravel is a good role model.

Why not start a big project? You will get distracted, get into details and product design stuff and get scared or border and abandon it. For your project you need an MVP - list of minimum required features that you put on paper - that you will complete. After that you can improve.

Good luck!

you can choose Node.js Here are my points

Node.js is build over chrome’s v8 and its works on non blocking io. Node.js have huge community and great packages (npm) to help you out in most cases and makes development faster Node.js has been adopted by many multi dollar company Hope this helps😊

The reason why i chose PHP is the amount of content you can find on the internet easily. As you quoted being a beginner, i think a more mature language would be better. And that's also another reason for following with PHP.

Python is simple and "mature", but it can be a bit hard to understand if you are a beginner. Python relies on heavy abstraction, and that's the reason behind it's simplicity. Python is an "easy to play, hard to master" language, i never recommend it to beginners. Also, one [maybe personal] reason why i don't like to use Python as back-end is: Python is very data-focused. So if your app has focus on business logic, Python wouldn't fit very well. And with that becomes an advantage, if your app has statistical focus, being data-focused or something like that, Python has huge advantage among all other languages due to many great tools the community has built.

About Node, it's like PHP, but less mature. It's as easy as PHP to find tools that can help you, for example, to abstract the database-connection's logic. But to find architectural-focused content, more advanced concepts, it's a lot harder. While that, Laravel's community, for example, has a lot of materials that involves those concepts.

Still, if you are really a beginner, i don't recommend using Laravel with PHP. Do things on plain PHP first, understand the reason behind using frameworks and Laravel's motivation.

Also, consider a strong-typed language first, those are considered more didatic, but less flexible.

I have used Laravel, but with Django you can develop faster, as authentication and admin panel are configured out of the box. It users SQLite by default and you won't have to worry about the database in the begginning

Python, PHP and Node.js all are capable of being used to create good complex software. There are many examples of similar applications built on all of them. If I have to pick one, I would say consider Python and Django. It is fairly easy to develop web applications on top of this stack. Scaling and maintaining the application should also not be a problem given a lot of resources are available online.

You cannot choose between Python | PHP | NodeJS Since they are entirely for Different purpose.

In Bird view

Python - Large Scale Projects and if you want a job in big IT company.

Node.JS - Huge computing projects and if you want job in Silicon valley startup.

PHP - Cost Effective and If you want start a business in near future.

Hi Eva, As you have solid experience with Spring already, you should jump into freelancing with that. It would be quite stressful to start freelancing with a tech stack you don't know well. Then in the background you can keep learning/practicing an alternative and switch over when you are confident enough (eg. 0.5-1 year later). I think you should learn Laravel as you already like it and find it easier. Express has better performance but that is not required for most of the small freelancer projects.

I think Patrik and Alex are right: if you're comfortable with Spring Boot already, you'll be more productive right from the start.

If you wish to learn something else besides, both Laravel and Express are good choices. They aren't in the same category of frameworks: Laravel is an all-in-one solution, while Express is more like "build your own stack from different parts". Which implies that you can use whatever you want as a database engine: MySQL or PostgreSQL are perfectly valid choices (in my school, we teach Express with MySQL, because SQL is still a big thing here in France, and a sought-after skill). You can use Sequelize or TypeORM which support all major SQL DBMS.

Express is widely used, but if you're seeking the JavaScript equivalent of Spring Boot or Laravel, you probably want to look at NestJS. The only potential downside is that it's still young, maintained by a small commmunity, compared to those behind Spring Boot and Laravel.

Bottom line: using a stack tech, that you enjoy and are comfortable with, matters. Spring Boot + Vue.js seem perfectly fine to me. But do forget jQuery if you're using Vue.js, React or Angular, because it will definitely bring more harm than good!

Looking at current technological trends and rise of JavaScript, you cannot go wrong with JavaScript. - There's an abundance of libraries to get most things done - You can use JavaScript for both the frontend and the backend - this allows you potentially share your logic/models/code across both stacks - A dynamic/interpreted language such as JavaScript is great for serverless (there's somewhat of a trend towards serverless aswell - especially in modern projects) - If you like/need static typing, you can always migrate seemlessly to Typescript - VueJS is a lightweight framework (compared to Angular), it has more GitHub stars and most would argue it's easier to work with (beginner friendly). Additionally most modern webapps do not use JQuery anymore (even though a lot of legacy projects continue to do so). You don't need JQuery if you use Vue/Angular/React

Additionally it doesn't seem like performance is a hugely important metric in your scenario, so JavaScript would suffice.

Note: These are all my opinions and what I've seen in the current market when recently searching for jobs.

I would definitely recommend you to go with Spring Boot + AngularJS + jQuery. Reasons: 1- You have an experience of 4 years with the above-mentioned stack. 2- As you mentioned that you wish to work as a freelancer, your stack is the perfect one for finding good bids with a little less effort than that of PHP + Laravel + Vue.js.

Hi as someone who employs and select developers i agree with a lot almost sayed but think of what are your strengths and where you are or better where your customers are. If you search for big enterprise projects spring boot is ok sql is must and html css as well. if you want to go more to internet related companies (like airbnb, what sup, facebook ) or similar (and not asia) then react is a must node js as well. The libraries tools etc which are used you need to adopt fast. If asia then VUE is a must. but if you like small projects with individuals or like wordpress or similar then you can learn php but i think in 2020 it is wasted time. Same for python in that area. and i also see that we often have problem that developer at least must understand docker docker compose better as it works with kubernetes ,.. just my 5 cents

As a developer myself, I would recommend you not to restrict yourself to JAVA, PHP or any other language. New Tools/languages keep coming every day. If you do plan to move to freelancing. PHP has a lot of options in the freelance space and a lot of competition too.

Learning PHP is as simple as learning any other language. It depends merely on your interest.

Personally if you can code, you should not restrict yourself. I have had to code in many languages, PHP, Perl, shell script, Python, Java, Javascript, Ruby etc... I would keep your developing skills and logic, algorithms etc.. and increase your knowledge and experience in the different languages.

I agree with you JAVA is a lot more time consuming. But it also has its enterprise level scope.

At the same time learning a new language should not be a barrier for you to stop exploring what's out there and keeping your skills up to date. Learning new technologies should be your primary focus and getting project out of your stack helps you build a good reputation.

There are many options for you to pursue. Having an open mindset will help you move forward. If you look to learn now, you are setting yourself up for a brighter future.

in order to stay employable, I'd work with something you can deliver with. if I'd be your client and you'd have to get comfortable with a new stack, I would 100% not pay you for this startup time. learn new stuff in your free-time. or set aside time for learning.

that said, if you want to reorientate, php (even though i personally hate it) is extremely wide spread. but so are java and nodejs. so I'm not a fan of that argument... i recommend building something in each language, and see what you enjoy more. for me it was nodejs, because I already enjoy frontend JavaScript, and appreciate the ecosystem and community.

regarding expressjs and mongodb: yes, it is a goto solution for a lot of tutorials, because its as simple as it gets. especially wben using something like monk. BUT if you want to use mysql, posgres or similar, check out TypeORM, Prism or another ORM-like solution. you can use any db with express, and there's plenty of abstraction layers, which make your life easier. but i noticed that expressjs does a lot less "holding hands" compared to .net core (c#), or laravel (php). can be a pro or a con.

I like fullstack freelancers who stacks are clean as one of below

1. PHP (laravel ) + Jquery + Bootstrap

2. Python(Django) + Angular JS or VueJS

3. NODEJS + REACTJS

Please, try to work with your comfortable stack, here is some recommendation

Hey There, I would recommend going fullstack javascript since you already have experience with javascript on the front end it would be very easy to pickup node and express js. You can use sql with node and express if you please, but mongo is pretty easy to get going with.

Firstly, you must know that java and python are both amazing languages. But I recommend python mainly because of the variety of modules and packages available to do almost anything. If you are planning on adding graphs, you can use the matplotlib library and to add photos, use the pillow module. And just note that both of these aren't available by default, so you need to install them through pip.

Hi, Kamal! I don't know if your question is still relevant. But I would like to introduce you to our solution, perhaps it will be useful for future projects. We have developed a web application constructor that can be used to create almost any website or application https://falconspace.site/. The entire development stack is reduced to SQL only. The platform is easy to configure and make subsequent changes if necessary.

I would start focusing on Javascript because even working with Rust and Python, you're always going to encounter some Javascript for front-ends at least. It has: - more freelancing opportunities (starting to work short after a virus/crisis, that's gonna help) - can also do back-end if needed (I would personally avoid specializing in this since there's better languages for the back-end part) - hard to avoid. it's everywhere and not going away (well not yet)

Then, later, for back-end programming languages, Rust seems like your best bet. Its pros: - it's satisfying to work with (after the learning curve) - it's got potential to grow big in the next year (also with better paying jobs) - it's super versatile (you can do high-perf system stuff, graphics, ffi, as well as your classic api server) It comes with a few cons though: - it's harder to learn (expect to put in years) - the freelancing options are virtually non-existent (and I would expect them to stay limited, as rust is better for long-term software than prototypes)

I suggest you to go with JavaScript. From my perspective JavaScript is the language you should invest your time in. The community of javascript and lots of framework helps developer to build what they want to build in no time whether it a desktop, web, mobile based application or even you can use javascript as a backend as well. There are lot of frameworks you can start learning i suggest you to go with (react,vue) library both are easy to learn than angular which is a complete framework.

And if you want to go with python as a secondary tool then i suggest you to learn a python framework (Flask,Django).

go for javascript, brother.

Python is very flexible and definitely up the job (although, in reality, any language will be able to cope with this task!). Python has some good libraries built in, and also some third party libraries that will help here. 1. Convert CSV -> JSON 2. Validate against a schema 3. Deploy to AWS

1. The builtins include json and csv libraries, and, depending on the complexity of the csv file, it is fairly simple to convert:

import csv
import json

with open("your_input.csv", "r") as f:
    csv_as_dict = list(csv.DictReader(f))[0]

with open("your_output.json", "w") as f:
    json.dump(csv_as_dict, f)

1. The validation part is handled nicely by this library: https://pypi.org/project/jsonschema/ It allows you to create a schema and check whether what you have created works for what you want to do. It is based on the json schema standard, allowing annotation and validation of any json

2. It as an AWS library to automate the upload - or in fact do pretty much anything with AWS - from within your codebase: https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-python/ This will handle authentication to AWS and uploading / deploying the file to wherever it needs to go.

A lot depends on the last two pieces, but the converting itself is really pretty neat.

This should be pretty doable in any language. Go with whatever you're most familiar with.

That being said, there's a case to be made for using Node.js since it's trivial to convert an object to JSON and vice versa.

I would use Go. Since CSV files are flat (no hierarchy), you could use the encoding/csv package to read each row, and write out the values as JSON. See https://medium.com/@ankurraina/reading-a-simple-csv-in-go-36d7a269cecd. You just have to figure out in advance what the key is for each row.

Since you are trying to make a Roblox game, you have no other option than to use Lua, since Roblox only allows coding in Lua. Yes, you've heard right, Python is identical and as easy as Lua, although Lua is easier than Python. Beginning from Lua and then escalating to Python is recommended. Java is only helpful when you are creating a heavy, big-budget, enterprise-level product, otherwise, Python would suffice.

If you really hate lua check out roblox-ts, a tool that compiles typescript code into roblox lua. https://github.com/roblox-ts/roblox-ts

We recommend Laravel over Ruby on Rails (Ruby) and Express.js (JavaScript/Node.js). We chose Laravel ourselves for our own internal software project, recently after comparing these same 3 software frameworks. In selecting Laravel, we chose to build our app using the software language PHP. PHP has the largest market share of all the web-based software languages (close to 80% of all websites use PHP). Also, Laravel is the fastest-growing software framework based on PHP making it a wise choice.

We also plan to integrate WordPress and WooCommerce later with our Laravel web-app. WordPress and WooCommerce like Laravel are all built using PHP. WordPress is the most popular Content Management System in the world. This will allow us to build out the front-end marketing website in WordPress. Also, we plan to offer subscriptions and sell products. For this, we will use WooCommerce. WooCommerce is the most used e-commerce platform in the world. We’ll be able to use our same Laravel developers to extend our app to WordPress and WooCommerce. By standardizing on PHP, we’ll be able to use the same software developers on all 3 platforms. PHP’s large market share will be an asset to us as we start recruiting talented software developers.

Lastly, we are gaining access to a fast-growing and awesome community that supports Laravel. Before we made our decision, I personally met Laravel’s founder Taylor Otwell along with several of his team members. After meeting with the Laravel team at Laracon US in New York City and learning more about the direction they are going with the framework, we’re confident we made the right decision.

To read the longer version of this answer where we go into more detail behind our recommendation, visit https://rackless.com/laravel-rails-expressjs

Before I recommend a tool, I think it is important to look at your requirements and capabilities - as you have looked at 3 very different tools: different programming languages, different implementation strategies and different target audience. It sounds like you don't already have a set of dedicated developers, so it is likely that your choice should be mainly driven by how easy it is to get developers that are familiar with the tools - so I'm going to list some considerations that I think you should review, starting with what I believe would be the most important for your bootstrap process:

1. Mindshare: how easy it is to get developers that are familiar with the technology and can immediately start working on your project. This is definitely where Node.js shines - Javascript is one of the fastest growing languages and Node.js played a huge part in this. I would bet that wherever you are located, Javascript developers would be the easiest to come by.

2. Fit for purpose: from your description we can understand that you are looking at a backend technology to implement some sort of REST API for a mobile app. The 3 different options you offered each fit on a different place on such a stack: Ruby is a programming language and not even a service framework - if you choose it, you then have to choose a server implementation and REST framework (and there are a lot, mostly as Ruby has a standard API for connecting a web server and application frameworks, and so this space has blown up) it used to be that Rails was the most popular, so you may choose that, but the interest in it has waned a bit in recent years; Node.js is a server framework, but it also has a dominant application framework called Express, that is geared well to your usage, so you'd likely work with that; Laravel is an application framework - it uses the PHP programming language, whose use has declined a bit in recent years, and was originally built for MVC type applications - though it has workflows for REST APIs and would probably work well for you as well.

3. Scalability: while this is probably the least significant issue at the moment (when it gets to a point where the backend service is your bottleneck, you'd likely have enough resources for a rewrite), and also the most dependent on factors that you didn't specify and are hard to estimate (such as: session complexity; amounts of data; sensitivity to locality; sensitivity to latency), it is still worthy to address it. Unfortunately, I don't have any good news: Ruby is notoriously bad at getting the best performance (the current BKM for milking performance from a Ruby codebase is to run the app on the Java virtual machine); Node.js has severe memory limitations that will make it very hard to scale if your backend needs to do a lot of work (I have a very personal and troubling experience with this issue); and PHP has as many scalability optimization strategies as there are PHP developers (this is not a good thing).

My suggestion to you as to how to proceed can be summarized to this prioritized list of options: 1. Get a good head developer with a lot of experience and let them choose the best tool - they'd likely go with what they know, which is likely to be a good choice - and if not, when scalability will become an issue, you could rewrite. 2. Choose something (likely Node.js) and don't worry about scalability - see (1) above. 3. Use Vert.x: it is a highly scalable application and service framework that offers great performance as well as a lot of tools to solve data scalability, locality and latency, and it works with multiple programming languages, such as Javascript and Ruby.

That's a really ambitious project. So you're going to want to move as quickly as possible. That means choosing a software stack that will allow you to move the most quickly. Of the ones you've listed, Ruby (Ruby on Rails, more precisely) will give you that. There are probably other options that would allow you to move even more quickly than Rails, but developers for those more advanced stacks are much more expensive, and hard to find.

Rails can and does scale to millions of users. It's not necessarily easy, but if you're running a successful app, you'll be able to afford people to help you scale out when you reach that point. But if you choose a slower framework (or have bad developers) you won't even reach the point of needing scalability.

Node.js would be the best choice among all, you can compare all 3 of them on Stackshare and you will find that Node.js is on the top on almost every aspect, and since your focus is primarily on Performance and Scalability you won't regret after choosing Node.js. Also, the JavaScript open-source community has made a lot of effort and created numerous packages that will give you the speed and smooth execution of your project you need. Though your question was regarding backend, but if you choose JavaScript(Node.js) at your backend, then you can have a cross-functional team that can work on both, frontend as well as backend because JavaScript is everywhere, React Native for Android and iOS apps, React.js for single page web apps and Node.js ofcourse for your backend. And I don't have to tell you how much easier it would be to code and manage in a single language to build your complete system end-to-end. I hope it helps.