Top 10 Programming Languages for Desktop Apps in 2022

Top 10 Programming Languages for Desktop Apps in 2022. Every person in today’s digital world knows how technology is continuously changing. Often, we see alternative technologies exceeding each other with regular advancements and updates. And the domain that gets affected by all these changes is Programming Language.

Needless to say, programming languages are the most essential requirement for almost every technology that is taking over the world be it Data Science, App Development or Machine Learning.

And, depending on the popularity and demands among developers, every year the ranking of programming languages changes as you can see out last year's list of top programming languages for desktop applications. But with thousands of programming languages out there, how can you choose the one that would be beneficial for you not only today but in the future too?

To minimize your difficulties, we have a list of the most in-demand programming languages in 2022. So let’s get into it!

Top 10 Best Programming Languages for Desktop Applications In 2022

Here is a list of the top 10 best programming languages for Desktop Apps in 2022.

1. JavaScript

2. HTML/CSS

3. SQL

4. Python

5. TypeScript

6. Node.js

7. Java

8. C#

9. Bash/Shell

10. PHP

1. JavaScript

Consistently for several years, JavaScript has held its position under the top 10 programming languages. JavaScript, often abbreviated as JS, is a lightweight, high-level, single-threaded, interpreted, just-in-time compiled language that complies with ECMAScript standards. It has first-class, prototype-based object-orientation, and dynamic typing functions. JavaScript also supports functional, event-driven, imperative programming styles.

Although the language is primarily popular for adding responsive elements in the web pages, it has a wide range of applications in game development, web app development, desktop app development and many more. Besides, Javascript is also being used as both front end and back end development language. Some of the brands using JavaScript include Google, Uber, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.

Read: React vs Vue.js 2022

Features of JavaScript:

• JS offers client-side validations that can guide users to correctly fill forms with valid data and prevent spam submissions.

• It is platform-independent and can run on any device irrespective of its operating system.

• JS uses a prototypal inheritance model where programmers need to define object prototypes and use it to create more objects of the same type.

• It also supports Async and Promises functions. The async-await function executes a request parallelly that improves processing time and responsiveness of the web page. On the other hand, in the promises function, we can make requests and concatenate the .then() clause that only executes after completion of the promise.

2. HTML/CSS

As we know both HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are core technologies used for developing web pages. And it’s unsurprising to see them making it to the list of top programming languages. While HTML provides the structure of the page, CSS adds visual and aural layouts for different devices.

HTML can embed programs written in JS that affect the behavior of web page content and CSS that defines the look and layout of the content. On the other hand, CSS improves content accessibility, provides more control and flexibility in the specification of presentation characteristics, enables sharing of multiple web pages formatting to reduce complexity and structural content repetition.

Read: Best Practices for Testing APIs

Features of HTML:

• HTML is user-friendly and simple as it allows programmers to write code using tag annotations.

• Using the semantic structure of HTML like <title>, <meta>, <header> etc for Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. helps their web crawlers to know what the web page content is all about.

• The localStorage and sessionStorage features of HTML help developers to store information such as usernames, authentication tokens using cookies on the client’s side.

• The IndexedDB features of HTML allow the web application to store data on the client-side and continue to perform even with dropped and flaky internet connection.

• HTML is platform-independent and can run on any device.

• It also has media support.

Features of CSS:

• Custom properties in CSS enable developers to define a replacement for CSS properties to use for your design in a central place.

• With the CSS Grid layout model, programmers can create complex layouts without using JS or reverting to complicated CSS hacks.

• The content-visibility feature of CSS allows developers to handle the off-screen elements’ rendering process.

• The pseudo classes - :is( ) and :where( ) reduces the repetition in longer CSS selector lists.

3. SQL

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a standardized programming language used to manage relational databases and perform different operations on them. Put simply, SQL is used to communicate with data in a DBMS. SQL allows you to object, manipulate & manage access rights on database objects, and search, modify, insert, and delete data. SQL is ideal for handling structured data and offers advantages over older read-write APIs like ISAM and VSAM.

Read: Top 10 NoSQL Databases

Features of SQL:

• SQL functions can have SQL Procedural Language features and statements that help in control-flow logic implementation around dynamic and static SQL statements.

• SQL supports input parameters

• SQL functions are easy to implement as they use strongly-typed, high-level language.

• SQL supports nested functions and recursion.

4. Python

Python is an interpreted, high-level, object-oriented programming language with dynamic semantics. The object-oriented and language constructs approach aims to help developers to write logical and clear code for application development, making it one of the top programming languages.

Python isn’t only dynamically-types and garbage collection but also supports multiple programming paradigms like object-oriented, structured, and functional programming. Instead of building all the functionalities at the core, Python can be made highly extensible through modules.

Read: 15 Frameworks for Web App Development

Features of Python:

• Being a high-level language, Python is easy to code.

• Allows development of Graphical User Interfaces using PyQt5, PyQt4, TK, and wxPython modules.

• It is an extensible language, hence, can be written into C or C++ code.

• Python comes with an extensible library that offers rich modules and functions so you don’t need to write code for everything.

5. TypeScript

TypeScript is yet another most popular programming language among developers that can be used for desktop application development. TypeScript is a strongly typed, strict syntactical superset language of JavaScript where optional static types can be added. It gives developers better tooling at any scale. TypeScript is an ideal language for the development of large-scale web applications. It also offers support for features like modules, classes, and arrow function syntax as defined in the ECMAScript standards.

Read: Front-End Developer RoadMap for 2022

Features of TypeScript:

• TypeScript supports JavaScript libraries and allows developers to use existing JS code.

• JS code with valid .js extension can be converted into TypeScript simply by changing extension from .js to .ts.

• TypeScript is portable across different devices, browsers and operating systems.

6. Node.js

Node.js is an open-source, free, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that runs on a V8 engine and executes JS code outside a browser. The Node.js app runs in a single process without creating new threads for each request. It allows users to write command-line tools for back-end scripting to produce dynamic content for web pages. Node.js comes with an event-driven architecture that is capable of asynchronous input and output which helps in optimizing the scalability and throughput of applications. Some of the brands using Node js include IBM, GoDaddy, Netflix, LinkedIn, Amazon Web Services, Walmart, etc.

Read: Top 10 reasons why you should learn Node.JS

Features of Node.js:

• The single-threaded architecture and event looping features of Node.js make it highly scalable.

• The APIs in the Node.js library are asynchronous, i.e, the server directly accesses the API data and moves on to the next one.

• Using V8 JavaScript runtime makes the execution of requests faster in Node.js

• It is a cross-platform programming language and can be used on any system.

• Data streaming in Node.js is faster due to fast data processing.

7. Java

Over the years, sometimes it seems like JAVA is losing its charm but if we look at the stats, it becomes crystal clear that Java always manages to stay under the list of top 10 programming languages. There are around 10 million Java users around the world and the number keeps growing every day.

Java is a high-level, object-oriented, class-based programming language that has as few implementations dependencies as possible and can develop cross-platform applications. It is a general-purpose language that is designed to let developers write code once and run it anywhere. It is widely being used for web and application development as well as in big data. Some of the brands using Java are Amazon, Google, and Youtube.

Read: Java Developer RoadMap 2022

Features of Java:

• The coding style of Java is simple, clean and easy to understand.

• Java combines the power of compiled languages with the features of interpreted languages.

• Java is portable and platform-independent allowing developers to write once, run anywhere (WORA).

• Java is robust, supports automatic garbage collection, and handles run-time exception errors.

• Java supports access modifiers that check memory access and guarantee no bugs enter an applet.

• Java is multithreaded so it can handle multiple tasks at once and execute multiple functions simultaneously.

8. C#

C# (C sharp) is a multi-paradigm, modern, general-purpose, simple, object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft. It includes strong typing, static typing, imperative, functional, component-oriented, lexically scoped programming behavior. C# supports application development principles like array bounds checking, strong type checking, and automatic garbage collection. It enables developers to build numerous types of robust and secure web, desktop, and gaming applications that run on the .NET framework.

Features of C#:

• C# is a modern, simple and object-oriented programming language derived from Java and C++

• C# is a part of Visual Studio 7.0

• It combines the raw power of C++ and the higher productivity of Visual Basic.

• Unsafe operations like memory manipulation aren’t allowed.

• It supports inheritance, data encapsulation, polymorphism and interfaces.

• C# has in-built support for converting any component into a web service.

9. Bash/Shell

Bash, also known as Bourne Again Shell is a Unix shell and a command language written for GNU operating system projects as a free replacement for Bourne shell. Bash is a superset of sh. Bash incorporates and improves the feature set of Bourne shell and took inspiration from KornShell and C Shell. Bash has introduced many config files like .bash_profile and .bashrc. The capability offered by Bash for command-line editing has exceeded the capabilities of previous shells.

Bash is a command processor and interpreter that runs in a text window to perform actions. It can also execute commands from a shell script. A Shell Script is a language used to define functions and variables. Bash supports brace expansion, signal handling, command-line completion, and basic debugging.

Read: Design Patterns in Java

Features of BASH:

• Bash is sh-compatible.

• It includes interactive shells that read from the terminal of users and write.

• Bash supports conditional expressions that can be used by [built-in commands and [[ compound command and tests.

• Bash shell scripting allows you to use command-line and multi-character options.

10. PHP

Hypertext Preprocessor or PHP is a general-purpose, server-scripting language that is ideal for app development. PHP code is processed on a web server by an interpreter that is implemented as a daemon, module or common gateway interface. Instead of including lots of commands to result in HTML, PHP pages contain HTML with embedded code. The major areas where PHP scripts can be used are server-side, command-line and writing desktop applications.

PHP can also be used on different operating systems like Linux, Unix variants, Windows, macOS, etc. It also gives you the option to choose an operating system, web server, and programming styles (either procedural, object-oriented or a blend of both). Some of the companies using PHP are Slack, Spotify, Trivago, Skillshare, and more.

Read: Kubernetes vs Docker Swarm

Features of PHP:

• PHP is simple, familiar and easier to learn as its syntax is similar to C language.

• It is flexible and embedded, hence, can be integrated with JavaScript, HTML, XML, and more.

• It can run on multiple platforms and operating systems.

• It allows using variables without declaring their data type.

• PHP supports error reporting constants that help in creating errors and warnings at runtime.

• It has active support from the community, has easier code maintenance, offers real-time monitoring, and provides memory usage details.

Conclusion

Programming languages are evolving regularly where languages are created and used for different purposes. But if you want to design and develop a desktop application, it is a must to learn and adopt some of these programming languages and develop your skill around them.

However, if you are a business owner who wants to build a desktop application relevant to your business, you can get in touch with experts to share your idea, get a quote on what would suit best for your requirements and hire developers with years of expertise and experience. Some of the languages that can help you achieve most of your goals are Java, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Python and C#.

And, as a developer, before deciding the programming languages you want to learn make sure to explore all the above-mentioned options. It will help you in finding the one that interests you the most.

So that was all, we hope the information shared will be useful for you.