> What backend do people use? Rails? Django? PHP? Perl? Some Javascript?
All of the above, and then some.
If you're just starting out with web development, it's much more useful that you learn MVC and REST; those are architectural skills that will result in you being able to adapt to most frameworks rather quickly. I'd personally vouch for Rails (or perhaps Padrino) and Ruby as an introduction to those concepts, seeing as that's where my own personal experience is, and seeing as Ruby is generally regarded to be an easy and programmer-friendly language, but feel free to make a choice based on your own personal language preference (Django if you like Python, Catalyst or Mojolicious if you like Perl, Chicago Boss or Phoenix or Sugar if you like Erlang or Elixir (respectively), etc.). You can't go wrong, so long as you learn those underlying concepts.
Lots of folks around here express distaste for "polyglot" programmers like (probably, at this rate) myself, but I personally appreciate that focusing on thorough understanding of core concepts rather than the ins and outs of specific implementations thereof is really helpful in this context.
All of the above, and then some.
If you're just starting out with web development, it's much more useful that you learn MVC and REST; those are architectural skills that will result in you being able to adapt to most frameworks rather quickly. I'd personally vouch for Rails (or perhaps Padrino) and Ruby as an introduction to those concepts, seeing as that's where my own personal experience is, and seeing as Ruby is generally regarded to be an easy and programmer-friendly language, but feel free to make a choice based on your own personal language preference (Django if you like Python, Catalyst or Mojolicious if you like Perl, Chicago Boss or Phoenix or Sugar if you like Erlang or Elixir (respectively), etc.). You can't go wrong, so long as you learn those underlying concepts.
Lots of folks around here express distaste for "polyglot" programmers like (probably, at this rate) myself, but I personally appreciate that focusing on thorough understanding of core concepts rather than the ins and outs of specific implementations thereof is really helpful in this context.