I could answer to this using my own words but I found a website which explains the stuff so well that I'm going to copy paste the answer from there.

JavaScript and PerlScript:

Pros: Safe, in theory cannot access client files/hardware.
Common to client and server.

Cons: Limited, cannot access client files/hardware.
Little interactivity, cannot generate graphics, sound, etc.

VBScript:

Pros: Can access client files/hardware, extensible using ActiveX.
Common to client and server.

Cons: Demands trust, OK perhaps for an intranet.
Requires installation of ActiveX objects on client system.

Shockwave:

Pros: Can extend browser capabilities.

Cons: Demands trust that the plug-in is safe.

Java:

Pros: Safe, cannot access client files/hardware directly.
General programming language with graphics, user interface, etc.
Program delivered to client on demand by server.

Cons: Cannot access client files/hardware.
High user interface development time, comparable to C++.

It's now up to you to decide which one is the best suited for your purposes!

Gmail is written in Java.
Wikipedia is written in PHP.
Many parts of google.com are written in Python.
Slashdot is written in Perl.
Twitter is written in Ruby.
Stackoverflow is written in C#.

I have seen this question many times and it always strike me as odd. Almost every language has pros and cons, some are better suited for something than others, its really about choosing the best tool for what you are trying to accomplish. The language will change depending on the goal.

Who is your favorite football team? What is the nicest house? Who is the best actor?

I'm in agreement as well with others that you can't answer questions like this. And if doing a simple search it would pull up 100's of posts that are already arguing about this.

The best programming language is all dependent on who you ask.

Fred

I have using c# so I just prefer only c# is best language because c# is a pure object oriented and many feature are addend in this.

Java Script is best........................................

Which one you know best???

The one you know has all the things to make your things done.

They really are...

Some of you answered server side language names to his client side programming question...I hope those who knows should answer the question after reading the question please

Yeah I agree with him, I also saw this question so many times in past times.

This problem is mentioned here too much... ==> Summary don't has a bad language and don's has a best language .... it depends on to the programer ...

I think Java and C++

I like the C language programming. This is the best, easy to learn programming languages. C language, a large high-level programming language designed for programming a universal.

hi.
first of all basic knowlege of c language,, easy to learn programming ,then u learn more programming language like a .net,java,php etc depend on ur interst

c language is the mother language of all the languages .......so from my point of view c language is the best language among all the languages........

Silpada,
Don't know if anyone has helped you out yet. Are you more confused than you begun?
Like mentioned before, be more specific or you get a million suggestions.

I found this in web. Might help U a lill

Thanks for the chart leppozdrav, its extremely useful.

@OP it depends on what you need to use it for.
also note there is a difference between a programming lanaguage and a scripting language.

Programming languages need compiling = execute as a whole = faster
Scripting languages doesn't need a compiler and just an interpreter = executes line by line everytime you run it = bit slower

C++ is a programming language, works perfect for complex large scale projects specially dealing with OS kernel and hardware related applications.
PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby are all scripting languages, can be used for web applications mainly and sometimes network level operations.

A scripting language is still a programming language

@c0ldfire: Thanks for your comment.... Your description is good..... Will help newbies to start with

@wayfarer:

Scripting or writing scripts, is programming within a program. Traditionally you would write scripts to automate certain functionality within another program. Traditionally scripts would have very specific task like for example: reading a text file to extract all the email addresses.

Scripting languages are easy to learn when compared to traditional programming languages.
It takes much less code to do something with scripting than when using a traditional programming language.

Another characteristic of a scripting language, is that they are processed from scratch every time you run them. A nerd would say: ’scripting languages are not compiled.’

I hope you got the difference!

I know what a scripting language is already, but thanks for the explanation. Scripting languages are still programming languages because they can move bits and can do recursion, etc. That's called "programming", there's no other term for it.

I don't know if scripting languages are easier to learn, but they are faster to work with once you get a handle on them. C, for example, is a very simple language, it uses very simple concepts. But to do something complex requires a lot of knowledge and time, without libraries. A scripting language is nothing but an interpreted programming language, usually with a huge standard library.

Any scripting language could have a compiler written for it if there was a team of developers willing to spend enough time on the problem. PHP has hip-hop, phc, and roadsend for it. A lot of people don't even know PHP has one compiler, much less three.

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In my opinion, .net is a best language for client side programming, because .net is a platforn independent, we can run any application on .net platform. we can also maintain high security in .net.