JavaScript Vs. Python 2022 — English

All of us who are in the world of software development know that it is an area that changes very quickly and is always growing, so we must always be acquiring knowledge to improve our skills and keep up with the industry.

Programming languages for software developers are tools used to create applications with a specific function. In this article we will study two very famous languages that have been leading the market, JavaScript and Python! Languages that can be compared, but that have use cases that may vary depending on what you want to do, as one or the other may be better.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a programming language that allows you to implement complex functions in web pages. JavaScript allows the user to interact with the web page. Whenever you see interactive maps, animations, drag and drop functions, graphics, among other things…, it is because JavaScript is present. In web development, everything that the client can see and interact with on a page is called Frontend and JavaScript along with HTML and CSS, are the necessary elements for this to work.

Javascript is also used in the backend (server side) where the user does not have access and the application logic is managed. It is used through NodeJS which is an event-driven environment designed to create scalable applications, it allows to establish and manage multiple connections at the same time. JavaScript also allows to build mobile, desktop and video game applications on the web through certain libraries such as React Native, PixyJS, BabylonJS, Electron, etc.

What is Python?

Python is a general-purpose, interpreted, cross-platform, high-level programming language. Interpreted means that it is not necessary to compile it to run applications written in Python, but they are executed directly on the computer through the interpreter. Python is a very easy language to read and write thanks to its similarity to the human language, this has generated an incredible growth in its use, since it allows to increase the development speed of the applications written with it. In recent years, it has grown even more because it is the ideal language to work in areas such as Data Science, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, among other areas that are currently booming.

Python is also widely used in the role of DevOps due to the ease it offers when automating tasks, server-side web applications with frameworks such as Django, Flask, FastAPI, etc. In videogames, with libraries like Pygame, PyOpenGL, etc. Besides, it is the preferred language to instruct people in the world of programming, all this thanks to its ease of reading and writing.

Now that we know a little about both languages and the use cases where they operate, let’s look at some terms like:

• Popularity: how well known the language is and how much support it has.
• Learning curve: indicates how difficult it is to learn a language.
• Performance: how fast and efficient the language is.
• Libraries: how much support the language has through third party code with specific functionality which we can incorporate in our code without reinventing the wheel.
• Wages: economic capacity provided by the language.
• Asynchronism: ability to defer the execution of a function while waiting for an operation to complete, avoiding blocking the execution until the function has finished.

Popularity

According to Stack Overflow, in its 2022 surveys, JavaScript is the most popular language according to 71,547 responses.

According to PYPL, Python has been the most popular language for the past year to date.

According to TIOBE, Python is currently the most popular language.

Learning curve

Both are simple languages that can be easily learned, but currently there is no language simpler than Python. As highlighted in the initial part when talking about what Python is, the emphasis was on its simplicity and easy adoption, which has made it stand out from the multitude of languages that currently exist. Python has fewer structural rules when coding unlike JavaScript.

Performance

JavaScript and Python are both interpreted languages, this makes them slower than compiled languages (Rust, Go, Java, C, C++), but in comparison between them with their native interpreters, JavaScript with its NodeJS environment is mostly faster than Python according to Game Benchmarks with NodeJS at version 18.1.0 and Python at version 3.10.4.

Libraries

Both programming languages are very popular as we saw before and have many libraries that solve common programming problems and avoid reinventing the wheel. JavaScript uses NPM as a package manager and Python uses PyPi. NPM in June 2019 surpassed one million packages released and PyPi currently has 385,637. The difference is incredibly large, yet both have very useful packages as well as very useless ones, such as knowing if a number is odd… It is not necessary to install a dependency for this, simply using the modulus operator (%) we can know if a number is odd or not.

Salaries

According to Stack Overflow with its 2022 statistics Python and JavaScript are not the highest paid languages, but among these Python is the best paid with an average of $71,105 and JavaScript with $65,580, especially with the boom that has been taking place during the last years with Data Science.

Asynchronism

Both have support for asynchronism, JavaScript and Python can execute asynchronous tasks outside the main process and then return it when it finishes. It is also possible to wait for the asynchronous task to be completed and continue with the execution of the process.

Conclusion

Both languages are incredibly popular, there are many courses that allow you to learn them professionally and have great libraries that will facilitate the work of any developer. Choosing one or the other will depend on what you want to be in the future, the purpose of the project and the skills of the team around you.

If your desire is to go into Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, it is best to learn Python because it is well suited for this with libraries like Pandas, Numpy, scikit-learn, etc. If you want to focus on the mobile world, you should definitely go for JavaScript and use libraries like React Native or Ionic. If you want to go for the DevOps branch, Python is the best choice because of the ability to automate. If you want to focus on web development, JavaScript will be your tool on the frontend undoubtedly, but on the backend both have good capabilities and it will depend more on the skills of your team and the purpose of the project, for example:

If your team is skilled in JavaScript, it can be done with this the frontend and the backend with Nodejs, which would make it easier to manage the project.
If the project is very performance-critical, it is advisable to choose NodeJS. A similar case could be with a streaming application where it is necessary to transmit data in real time.

If the project requires intensive use of data and complex operations, Python is the best choice, because Python allows the integration of AI and big data operations.

I hope this article has helped you, which language do you want to learn? And if you already know them, which one do you recommend to beginners? Leave it in the comments.

Author: Mario Peña.

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