PYTHON VERSES JAVA
But as two of the most popular programming languages around, it’s worth looking at some of their similarities, differences, advantages, disadvantages, and ideal use cases.
First off, despite that Instagram joke, it’s important to remember that Java and Python share important similarities as well as key differences. Both are powerful programming languages, for example, with large, devoted communities and a huge array of libraries supported by legions of developers. If you can’t do something with the native language itself, you can very likely find a library to provide the required support. In fact, no one may truly know the bounds of the library support for either language because no one person could try them all. Obviously, some libraries are more popular than others, and some appear in nearly every application of any consequence at some point.
But Java and Python are also very different from a number of perspectives. Some of these differences are objective and not open to debate, while others are a matter of opinion, usage preference, or programming environment.
For example, Java is a compiled language and Python is an interpreted language. This difference gives each language particular benefits and drawbacks. Even as arguments rage over whether compiled code is faster to execute than interpreted code, for example, the truth is typically more nuanced. Whether one language is faster than another depends—among other things—on the environment in which they’re used. For example, Python is more adept at running in massively parallel mode on GPUs.
The two languages are also written differently. When creating a structure in Java, you enclose it in braces. Python uses indentation to perform the same tasks. FreeCodeCamp calls Python code “neat, readable, and well structured. Proper indentation is not just for beauty here — it determines code execution.”
These structural differences can affect how programmers view the languages and the speed at which a programmer can type them. Theoretically, they also have an impact on the skill level required to learn the language. In most cases, though, the issue really comes down to a matter of personal preference. More to the point, perhaps, many developers rely on IDEs, coding environments, and templates, which makes the issue far less important.
Programmers endlessly debate the merits of the two languages in other ways, as well. For example, some people claim that a developer can be five to ten times more productive in Python because Python supports, among other things, dynamic typing. Others have opposing views about the productivity issue. Most of these arguments use different approaches to prove their point, making for not-very-useful apples-to-oranges comparisons. Which language is ultimately more productive typically depends on the developer’s experience with the language, coding style, and application-development requirements.
Practically speaking, remember, language tools eventually turn whatever programmers create into machine code. So choosing a language isn’t a matter of which one the machine will like more, but one of meeting a developer’s requirements for clearly conveying a task to the machine in terms that the developer understands.
Trends in Java and Python
While not as trendy as it once was, Java is still the most popular programming language by virtually any measure. On the other hand, Python’s growth has been astronomical, especially in developed, high-income countries. According to some sources, Python will eventually overtake Java’s popularity. The reasons for this amazing growth include developer productivity, language flexibility, library support, community support, and ease of learning. Python has also been heavily leveraged in hot areas like data science and artificial intelligence as well as web applications, desktop apps, network servers, and media tools.
Java’s popularity, meanwhile, may have been hurt by its less-than-stellar security reputation. Tech news sites such as The Register delight in bashing Java, while The Hill claims that 88% of Java apps have security issues. Of course, Java’s bad rap is largely due to problems with the Java browser plug-in, otherwise the language’s security problems are not significantly worse than other languages. In any case, Python’s own security record is far from ideal, but it has enjoyed better supportin that area, and Python’s ease of use can make it easier for less-experienced developers to secure their code.
However, it would be unwise to think of Java as a “has been” language. Java developers keep adding new functionality and making Java smaller, faster, and more flexible when it comes to large-scale development. The powerful Java Virtual Machine (JVM) makes it easy to create cross-platform compatible Java applications, and Java continues to excel at building large traditional applications that represent the kind of coding that most businesses engage in today—it’s used by 90% of the Fortune 500! No matter how you cut it, the huge installed base of Java application code—and Java programming jobs—isn’t going away any time soon.
Java and Python also use very different threading models. The Python GIL, or Global Interpreter Lock, means that, unlike Java, Python is effectively single-threaded—it can only run on a single CPU core at a time. On the other hand, using a GPU with Python is relatively simple, compared to doing the same thing with Java. So, while it may not yet be a standard implementation outside of scientific applications, a Python application running in a massively parallel mode on a 5,120-core GPU is likely going to smoke a fully optimized Java application running on an 8-core CPU.
Perhaps due to the wide range of Java-development positions, a recent freeCodeCamp post noted that Python programmers typically make more money than Java developers: $116,000 vs. $102,000 per Indeed and $99,000 vs. $96,000 per StackOverflow.
