Choosing the right programming language for your work is a huge priority before starting to write your first lines of code. There are plenty of languages for you to choose from. And it's easy to learn with plenty of online resources available. You might have encountered two languages that intrigue you: Python VS JavaScript.
In some ways, these two languages are comparable, but usually, their use cases, syntax, and approaches to programming differ significantly.
Both Python and JavaScript are two of the most popular programming languages as of now. Although both are object-oriented programming languages, their scopes are different. Python and JavaScript have a lot in common but with some significant differences. There are ample job opportunities available for both Python and JavaScript developers. Hence, choosing one of the two programming languages for starting a coding career is a good option. Before we go ahead and start enumerating the various dissimilarities between Python and JavaScript, let’s first get a brief introduction about the two competitors.
What is python?
Python is a high-level object-oriented programming language. It has built-in data structures, combined with dynamic binding and typing, which makes it an ideal choice for rapid application development. It is much easier to learn Python than to learn JavaScript. In fact, one of the main design objectives of the Python programming language is being easy to understand and implement. Python also offers support for modules and packages, which allows system modularity and code reuse. It is one of the fastest programming language as it requires very few lines of code. Its emphasis is on readability and simplicity, which make it a great choice for beginners.
What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is a scripting language that helps you create interactive web pages. It is highly used in browsers to provide dynamic functionality which we cannot achieve through normal HTML and CSS. It has support for standard applications with text, regular expressions, and dates. JavaScript is also known as browser’s language. Developers can even write JavaScript code in such simple programs as
Notepad++. Java is a multi-platform, object-oriented, and network-centric, programming language. It is among the most used programming language.
Key differences between Python and JavaScript:-
- Java language is more about syntax, if one can forget to add curly braces semicolon in the end then this will show error as your output. But there is nothing like that with python there is no need of semicolon and curly braces in the end but python follows the indentation process so that it will make your code readable.
- Java codes are more complex than python codes. If one can write a hello world program in both then you can observe the complexity of the code, 4 lines of code in Java and the same hello world program in python will be of 1-line code.
- If someone works on a project which requires a fast speed then java is the best choice because python is an interpreter and it will assume data type of a variable at runtime due to which it becomes slower than java.
- Data types in Python are divided into mutable and immutable types. For example, the set is a mutable data type while the list is an immutable data type. Mutable objects are those whose values can be changed once they are assigned values and immutable objects cannot change values. JavaScript has no concept of mutability.
- Python has built-in hash tables called dictionaries, sets etc. JavaScript has no provision for built-in hash table support in any form.
- Python is known as a ‘batteries-included programming language’ because it comes with several modules. It also has numerous libraries for accomplishing data analytics, machine learning, and scientific computing. JavaScript comes with a fewer number of modules, such as date, JSON, and math.
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In code blocks, python uses indentation whereas JavaScript uses curly brackets.
Advantages of Python:-
- Python is a high-level programming language that has English-like syntax. This makes it easier to read and understand the code. Python is really easy to pick up and learn, that is why a lot of people recommend Python to beginners.
- Python is a very productive language. Due to the simplicity of Python, developers can focus on solving the problem. They don’t need to spend too much time in understanding the syntax or behavior of the programming language.
- Python is an interpreted language which means that Python directly executes the code line by line. In case of any error, it stops further execution and reports back the error which has occurred.
- Python doesn’t know the type of variable until we run the code. It automatically assigns the data type during execution. The programmer doesn’t need to worry about declaring variables and their data types.
- In many languages you need to change your code to run the program on different platforms. That is not the same with Python. You only write once and run it anywhere.
Disadvantages of Python:-
- Python is an interpreted language and dynamically-typed language. The line by line execution of code often leads to slow execution. The dynamic nature of Python is also responsible for the slow speed of Python because it has to do the extra work while executing code. So, Python is not used for purposes where speed is an important aspect of the project.
- To provide simplicity to the developer, Python has to do a little tradeoff. The Python programming language uses a large amount of memory. This can be a disadvantage while building applications when we prefer memory optimization.
- Python is not memory efficient and it has slow processing power as compared to other languages.
- Programming in Python is easy and stress-free. But when we are interacting with the database, it lacks behind. The Python’s database access layer is primitive and underdeveloped in comparison to the popular technologies.
Advantages of JavaScript:-
- JavaScript tends to be very fast because it is often run immediately within the client's browser. So long as it doesn't require outside resources, JavaScript isn't slowed down by calls to a backend server.
- JavaScript's syntax was inspired by Java's and is relatively easy to learn compared to other popular languages.
- JavaScript is everywhere on the web, and with the advent of Node is increasingly used on the backend. There are countless resources to learn JavaScript.
- JavaScript is client-side, so it reduces the demand on servers overall, and simple applications may not need a server at all.
- JavaScript can be used to create features like drag and drop and components such as sliders, all of which greatly enhance the user interface and experience of a site.
Disadvantages of JavaScript:-
- The main problem or disadvantage in JavaScript is that the code is always visible to everyone anyone can view JavaScript code.
- If the error occurs in the JavaScript, it can stop to render the whole website. Browsers are extremely tolerant of JavaScript errors.
- JavaScript is usually interpreted differently by different browsers. This makes it somewhat complex to read and write cross-browser code. • JavaScript is a very old scripting language running on the machines and
there are other technologies which are doing the same thing in place of it in a better and easy way.
- JavaScript file is download on client machine so anyone can read the code and reuse it.
Conclusion:-
Both programming languages share a lot of aspects, such as following a multi paradigm approach and being lexically scoped. At the same time, there are several differences between the two that must not be ignored. Java is older, matured, faster and also a concurrent programming language. Python, on the other hand, is the latest, slower and non-concurrent language. Java is popular in mobile and web application development. Also for parallel programming and database applications, Java is the first choice for programmers. Python has weaker database connectivity and also does not support concurrent operations. Python is simple and succinct, Java is quick and more portable. While Python codes are dynamically-coded, Java is statically-coded. Python’s future is very glaring from where we see and presume that its future is assertive. We can conclude that both Java and Python languages have their own benefits. It really is up to you to opt a particular language for your project.
