What most of the web development is doing is using node.js for both the client and the server. That way the code is all javascript and can be shared between the client/server without problems.
You can burst into flames about javascript server programming, because I sure did, but that's what is happening. Even client applications are using HTML/javascript. For example, look at the Atom editor and Visual Studio Code. It is all javascript using Chrome as the runtime environment.
Either way you do it, the backend code can use a simple REST interface. All the popular javascript frameworks have this stuff build in so it's pretty easy. Any server language will have this stuff. Java, Go, python, c, it's all out there.
I did a review of all the crap out there a few months ago, and settled on React and Redux. My buddy who works at Atlassian suggested it. It is large, complicated, and silly, but I don't know enough or care enough about Html/css/javascript to write everything from scratch.
Give node.js a couple weeks. At first you will hate it, but it has it's place.