Telegram is a popular instant messaging app founded by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov. It is very much like WhatsApp and it is slated to be the nearest competitor to WhatsApp I a few years. You can send messages, photos, videos, audio, stickers, and files of any type. The best part is that it is open-source. But the code for the latest version is not published immediately. However, it does publish APIs for independent developers and therefore, Telegram is sure to offer various interesting features in the future that WhatsApp cannot afford to. The growth of the app is 50% annually which is beyond expectations. Today, we are going to find out the programming languages used in writing Telegram. First of all, it is clear that such an app cannot be developed with one single programming language for obvious reasons as no programming language is complete by itself.

Programming Languages Behind Telegram –

First of all, let us take WhatsApp into comparison for better understanding. As per the reports, the technical stack or the collection of programming languages used for WhatsApp consist of six different technologies. They are Erlang, FreeBSD, Yaws, Lighttpd, PHP, and XMPP. Erlang is used for the real-time chatting feature. FreeBSD is responsible for the app to desktop transition or Web WhatsApp along with PHP.

XMPP is the technology responsible for sending messages, online presence showing features, routing features and much more. It is called the backbone of WhatsApp. The rest two are web servers for increasing the swiftness, security, and flexibility. Other than that, for developing the apps and their features, respective programming languages for respective platforms were used like Swift, Java, and C#.

What Is The Technical Stack For Telegram?

Since Telegram is an open-source app, it is easy to get the list of the technical stack that the app has in the background. For the Windows app, the development team has used C# thoroughly. For the overall Android app, Java has been used which is very obvious. Besides, for the iOS app, there are two different languages used which are Objective-C most and Swift partly. For the web app, AngularJS and NodeJS have been used. In comparison, WhatsApp uses PHP. For the desktop app, there are multiple languages used. Some of them are Objective-C, C, C++, and Qt.

Speed Misconception –

There is a misconception that the speed and performance of Telegram are due to the choice of the programming languages. But it has nothing to do with programming languages as Telegram employs several technologies and protocols. It uses MTProto Mobile protocol for speed and Diffie-Hellman key exchange for authentication and cutting the middleman out. Telegram is constantly upgrading its features and new programming languages and the current version uses Node-JS, Express, and MongoDB in the backend.

Swift and Objective-C Together – AI-based chatbots are at the heart of Telegram and the languages supporting them can be anything for the developers. However, C++ and Java are the most used ones by the developers. If you are wondering why Objective-C and Swift have been used simultaneously, well, Swift has certain speed advantages over Objective-C and therefore, it has been included partially in areas where the speed is the main requirement. Moreover, big companies are mobbing from Objective-C to Swift and it could be that Telegram is testing out Swift before they can move to it completely. It is less error-prone and one has to write less code.

The Possibilities –

Due to its open-source nature, if you head over GitHub section of Telegram Apps, you will find the use of Qt framework opens up different possibilities. It is a cross-platform framework and you can use different programming languages on it like Python and C++. It is the platform most of the big companies are doing for developing cross-platform software for their products. Besides, for the Android app where it is mostly focused, the traditional combination of Java and XML has been used which is on the expected lines and it is the only thing common with WhatsApp.

Apart from these, the web servers and the technologies the company is using to boosting its speed and amplifying its performance have been kept undisclosed. However, for a person or a team wanting to develop an instant messaging app can opt for any desired web server they want to. They have to be compatible with the backend and frontend technologies used not to cause any stain and friction for the smooth running of all operation when the load is beyond imagination.

If one has to choose one programming language to describe Telegram, it has to be C++ which is surprising as Telegram is a relatively new app and you would expect new programming languages and technology behind it. But the security factor has been given attention and hence, C++ has been used extensively in the development of important features.

Kitty Gupta
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