Top 5 Backend Frameworks 2021
By: Solomon Eseme
Tags: Framework, Laravel, Backend Development, Ruby on Rails, Django

top 5 backend framework 2021

As backend developers, we know that frameworks are critical in our day-to-day software development. Choosing the right framework for your projects in 2021 is also an essential skill as your project may grow and increase demand.

In as much as different developers use numerous frameworks across the world, there are only a handful of these backend frameworks that remain formidable and have the ability to deploy a large and scalable application.

In this article, I will look at the top five backend frameworks to give you an insight into what you can start learning in 2021.

Top 5 backend frameworks 2021

Laravel Django Spring Boot Ruby on Rails Express

Laravel

Laravel is a PHP MVC framework for web artisans.

It’s a web application framework with beautiful and elegant syntax. It is also an open-source framework for building simple to complex web applications following the MVC architectural pattern.

PHP powers over 79.1% percent of all websites across the internet. Laravel is one of PHP's most popular frameworks; this makes Laravel stand out as a framework to learn in 2021. Laravel provides easy development, enjoyable, and good software development practices. It also takes away pains in software development by providing a different abstraction to popular development tasks such as:

Routing Engine:

Laravel provides a simple and straightforward routing engine to ease the development process of a developer.

Dependency Injection:

Laravel provides a powerful dependency injection container that allows developers to plug in any Service, Class, and module.

Multiple Session and Cache Engines:

Laravel provides easy-to-navigate session and cache engines with different popular cache and session engines supported out of the box.

Eloquent Database ORM:

This is one of the most powerful features of Laravel; Eloquent takes away the pain of manually handling databases away and provides an easy-to-use ORM. Check out the complete guide on Laravel relationships to give you a clear picture of how Laravel handles database operations easily.

Database Schema Migration:

With Laravel’s Schema, you don’t need to write a single SQL to create a database schema/table because Laravel handles all that out of the box.

Further Learning

To learn more about Laravel, take a look at our Laravel tutorial: The ultimate guide 2021.

When it comes to learning Laravel, I will personally and highly recommend Laravel 8 Beginner to Advance with Complete News Portal. With it, I was able to learn and start building projects with Laravel within a week.

Django

Django is a high-level python web framework built with Speed, Security, and Scalability at its core.

It also encourages RAD (Rapid Application Development ) using clean, pragmatic software design. It is built by more experienced developers to facilitate the application development process by taking away plenty of web development hassles. When building larger projects with Django, it allows you to harness the full power of the framework. Django has many sweet features that make it stand out from other frameworks.

Ridiculously Fast:

Django framework is built with speed in mind, and developers can build complex and large applications in no time.

Security:

Security is primary in Django as it helps developers to avoid some securities pitfalls.

Scalability:

Scalability is primary in the framework making it easy for web applications to scale efficiently.

Further Learning

Django & Python: complete BUNDLE + Django real project 2020 is my favorite course on Django because it takes you from Python programming language to Django to building complex real-world projects.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot is an open-source Java-based framework for creating standalone, production-ready Spring-based applications.

The Spring framework is a Java-based framework and inversion of the control container for the Java platform. According to W3techs, Java is the fourth most used server-side language in all websites, making Spring Boot a top choice for Java-based companies. If you are a Java developer learning the Spring framework is a must for your career.

The Java Spring Boot has many great features that allow developers to write clean, and elegant Java codes, such as:

You can create stand-alone Spring applications that can be deployed on a different server and scaled independently.

Embedded Tomcat server, jetty, and others out of the box, no need to write any complex WAR files for configuration.

Spring boot provides a starter template to get you started quickly with dependencies to simplify your build configurations.

It also provides automatic configurations for Spring and third-party libraries.

Further Learning

Learn Hibernate and Spring (As A Total Beginner) Tutorial is a complete package course if you want to delve right into Spring, Spring Boot, Hibernate, etc., and start building real-world projects.

Ruby on Rails

ROR (Ruby on Rails) is a new member of our top 5 backend frameworks family. Recently there has been a major rise in the Ruby community. It is currently the 3rd most used server-side language on all websites, according to W3Techs.

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web application framework that is based on the Ruby programming language. Developers using Ruby on Rails are encouraged to used MVC patterns and the DRY software principle. If you have worked with Django and Ruby on Rails before, you will notice similarities in principles but different programming languages.

Many features make Ruby on Rails stands out from other frameworks, such as:

It offers clean syntax and easy to understand codebase. ROR provides clean ORM using Active Record It has a massive and large community of developers for assistance. You can easily build and deploy small projects and scale them to larger ones easily.

Further Learning

The Complete Ruby on Rails Developer Course is my top recommendation for learning Ruby on Rails and a top recommendation from a Ruby on Rails developer.

Express

According to the StackOverflow 2020 Survey, JavaScript is the most popular language, with about 67.7% of respondents including the Frontend and Backend parts of JavaScript.

But according to W3Techs, Server-side (Backend) JavaScript currently powers only about 1.1% of all websites. The JavaScript community is gaining this popularity on the Server Side with Node.js. Expressjs a go-to framework when using Node.js for Backend development. Express is a fast, unopinionated, and minimalist JavaScript framework for Node.js. It’s a flexible Nodejs web framework for building a robust set of features in web and mobile applications with Node.js.

Expressjs has great features that can speed up your development process with Node.js, such as:

Other frameworks use good routing systems. The setup process only requires installing the library through an NPM command. Expressjs has a large number of predefined plugins and libraries you can install to achieve almost anything. Express also has a huge community and users; therefore, you won’t be stuck for so long in a bug.

Further Learning

NodeJS — The Complete Guide (MVC, REST APIs, GraphQL, Deno) is my top recommendation and complete guide you need to learn Nodejs and Express.

Bonus

For reading this long, I have a reward for you. Below is a list of 5 backend frameworks also worth checking out in 2021

You can take a glance at the frameworks with this infographic from Galaxyweblinks.

Final Thoughts

This article covered the top five back-end frameworks of 2021 and the different features that make them stand out. Choosing a particular framework for your project will solely depend on the type of project you are undertaking, as well as the programming language and team strength. It is most likely that you’re familiar with JavaScript already as a beginner, so I will encourage you to delve into Expressjs immediately, in my opinion.

Furthermore, if you’re coming from a PHP or OOP background and looking at learning a framework, start with Laravel immediately. Learning Laravel or Express may be easy to get a job and start making money while learning others as needed. After learning the above frameworks, you can choose anyone from the list and further as required.

In the comment section, let me know which backend framework you will learn first in 2021 and which was your first back-end framework, and why. Happy coding!