Just to throw a little spanner in the works... how about Blockcypher's API?
https://www.blockcypher.com/dev/The "free" limits are relatively low... but enough to have a decent play with the system to get used to it. They have examples for cURL, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Go and PHP
At the end of the day, it is probably mostly about personal preference as to which one you want to use. If you get serious, then speed and cost are probably going to be a deciding factor.