Chatbots employ natural language processing and machine learning, which enables computers to learn from data (the branch of computer science that gives computers the ability to understand text and spoken words). They are programmed into the server-based back-end. Let’s look at some of the programming languages that provide these capabilities, either directly or via third-party libraries.
- Python
For data projects, machine learning projects, and chatbot projects, Python is the recommended language. Even inexperienced coders may read and grasp its basic syntax. Python is a pretty simple language to use to prototype chatbots and doesn’t require the additional compilation step that some programming languages do because it isn’t as verbose as many other languages. A wide range of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) packages are also available for Python, including the potent Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), which many developers believe to be the greatest NLP toolkit.
2. Java
Because it is a general-purpose, object-oriented language that is portable and platform-independent, Java is another language that is frequently utilized for chatbot projects. Java is known for its versatility and the fact that applications written in it may execute on any machine with the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed. Java supports multithreading, outperforming several other languages on this list in terms of speed. A chatbot created in Java may easily be linked to corporate ecosystems since it is extensively utilized in enterprise development. Several third-party libraries for machine learning and natural language processing are available for Java, including Stanford Library NLP and Apache Open NLP.
3. Ruby
Another well-liked programming language for chatbots is Ruby. Developing chatbots may be made simple with this high-level, object-oriented programming language. Its syntax is similarly simple to read and comprehend as Python. Ruby also enables dynamic programming, a popular method for designing algorithms that allows you to change the code as the demands of the system change. Because of the language’s clear syntax and user-friendly, well-documented third-party libraries, many developers swear by it. There are several machine learning and natural language processing packages available in Ruby, including a whole framework called Stealth that was created specifically for building chatbots.
4. C++
Chatbots may also be developed using C++. It is frequently employed when performance is a priority since it has the quickest speed among the programming languages on this list. The trade-off for this performance boost is that it’s a low-level programming language. One will have to develop a significant portion of a chatbot from scratch because C++ is not the simplest language to learn, and there are not many high-level libraries in the language designed for building chatbots. Still, in terms of performance and quickness, it is unrivaled.
5. PHP
Since the beginning of online development, PHP has been used to construct websites and web applications. It’s a fantastic language for creating chatbots, too. One of PHP’s benefits is that many developers are familiar with it and that many websites already use it, which makes it easier to incorporate a PHP chatbot into current systems.