Are you confused which web app development technology is the right fit for you: JavaScript or Python? Do you want to know the real difference between these two most popular tools for web development? You have landed at the right place. In this blog, we will talk about various pros and cons of choosing these two languages as well as JavaScript vs Python performance and JavaScript vs Python speed and learning curve. In addition, we will compare these two languages on various parameters. So, let’s start:

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is one of the most popular and renowned scripting languages at present. It is an interpreted based programming language conforming to the specification of ECMAScript. It helps the developers create interactive and user friendly web application pages with utmost ease. Often abbreviated as JS, the programming language is known for its curly-bracket syntax, prototype-based object-orientation, dynamic typing, and first-class functions.

 

In addition to HTML & CSS, JS is a core technology or tool of the World Wide Web. It- being an essential part of web applications- is used by the vast majority of websites for client-side page development. Furthermore, all major web browsers in the world have a dedicated engine of JavaScript that executes it.

 

JavaScript is known as a multi-paradigm programming language which supports functional, event-driven, and imperative styles of programming. It offers APIs (application programming interfaces) that help you working with dates, standard data structures, regular expressions, text, and the DOM (Document Object Model) effectively.

What is Python?

If you are looking for an interpreted, general-purpose, high-level programming language; then Python is the best choice for you. This programming language is an ideal choice for rapid web application development due to its built-in data structures that are amalgamated with dynamic typing and binding.

 

Conceived in the 1980s as a successor to the ABC programming language, Python introduced various advanced features like a garbage collection system which is capable of collecting various reference cycles and list comprehensions. There are many software companies in Dubai that create a secure and scalable web app using Python.

 

Python vs. JavaScript: the popularity of both languages

According to the Developer Survey of 2019, JavaScript, as a programming language is leading the list and Python stands fourth in the list. Have a look at it:

Source: W3C Tech

 

Npw have a look at some of the most loved languages. When it comes to the most loved programming language, Python comes second, and JavaScript programming language comes second last. 73.1% of people love Python as their preferred programming language. Here is a stat showing Python as one of the most loved programming languages:

 

Source: W3C Tech

 

 

Now have a look at some notable features of both Python and JavaScript that make these popular:

 

Here are the important features of JavaScript:

 

• It is widely used for server-side and client-side
• It is a cross-platform programming language
• It is known for the strong testing workflow
• It is easy to learn and one can easily start coding with this
• It offers added dependencies

 

Image: Stack Overflow Questions Javascript vs. Python

Here, are crucial features of Python

 

• The programming language can run on different hardware platforms and using the same interface.
• Easy to learn, maintain and read
• You can easily include various low-level modules to the interpreter of Python.
• Python provides ideal support and structure for large programs.
• It provides support for automatic garbage collection.
• Python offers high-level types of dynamic data and also supports dynamic type checking.
• It also supports an interactive and easy mode of debugging and testing.
• Python as a programming language can be integrated with C, Java, and C++ code
• It has easy concurrency support using goroutines
• It is also famous among developers for its fast compilation times
• IT has various statically linked binaries which are simple to deploy

 

Have a look at several applications of both JavaScript and Python:

Here, are crucial applications of Javascript

 

• When you hire website developer for JavaScript, you can rest assured of the security and scalability of your web application as this programming language allows you to build scalable and secure applications.
• It is known to build dynamic Single-Page Applications (SPAs)
• There are various popular front-end technologies like AngularJS, jQuery, ReactJS, Ember.js are based on the JavaScript
• There are various server-side technologies like Node.js, MongoDB, and Express.js are based on the JavaScript programming language.
• The language is also used for mobile application development using PhoneGap, React, etc.

Here are crucial applications of Python:

 

• It is widely popular as a language for AI, deep learning and Machine learning.
• It gives you the opportunity of rapid prototyping web scripting
• Scientific applications
• Ad hoc programming
• XML processing
• Used for GUI applications
• Database applications
  
  
  

Pros & Cons of Python

 

Pros	Cons
It is a powerful object-oriented programming language.	The language is weak in mobile computing, hence rarely used in mobile app development
It comes with a large standard library, therefore, it supports a plethora of common programming tasks.	The language is used in fewer platforms.
It uses an elegant syntax that makes the software which you code easier to read.	Python is dynamic in nature, so it shows more errors at the run-time.
It runs on different types of operating systems and computers: macOS, Windows, OS/2, Unix, etc.	The primitive and under-developed database access layer
It has pretty simple syntax as compared to C, Java, and C++ languages.	Absence of commercial support
Python has its auto-installed shell
It is known for handy tools and an extensive library for developers
Python is a portable programming language so that it can run on a plethora of operating systems and platforms.
Compared with the code of various other programming languages, the python code structure is easy to write and debug. Hence, its source code is comparatively easy to maintain.
It comes with a plethora of prebuilt libraries that make your development task easy.
Python also helps you to make complex programming pretty simple. Because it deals internally with garbage collection and memory addresses.
Python offers an interactive shell that helps the developers to test the things before actual implementation.
It also offers database interfaces to all major commercial database management systems.

 

Pros & Cons of JavaScript

 

Pros	Cons
It is an open-source project	Client-side JavaScript doesn’t allow the writing and reading of files. It also has been kept for various security reasons.
The language is a specially designed tool for small scripts	JavaScript does not have any multithreading multiprocessor features.
It supports interfaces, classes, & modules.	JavaScript cannot be used for networking applications as there is not much support available.
Compiled JavaScript runs in any browser
JavaScript programming language is used both on the server-side and the client-side. which means that this programming language runs practically everywhere from web browsers to powerful servers
It also allows cross-compilation
JavaScript has a vast community that actively back the programming language.
You can also extend JS for writing large web apps
You can use this programming language to retrieve and store information on the user's computer
It allows the developers to create interfaces that react when the user hovers using the mouse.
It also provides immediate feedback to the app visitors

 

Learning curve: Which language is easier to learn?

For most of the developers, JavaScript is harder to learn. Here I am not talking about all the developers. It may be possible that for some developers JS is easy to learn.

 

Initially, JS seems easy to learn because it runs on the browser. In order to see JavaScript in action, all you have to do is open the console and start writing code on it. For instance, most of you probably understand that you can easily use Inspect Element in order to edit elements on a web app page, but instead of doing this, you can write it in the console.

 

But, JavaScript becomes complex and time consuming pretty fast, especially compared to Python. As JavaScript is first a client-side programming language, therefore, it puts the user first and the web developer second. When you hire a website developer, you should keep this in mind.

 

For instance, let us discuss an Asynchronous JavaScript. Here is a piece of programming code you may understand:

This is an optimization script for Google. In order to optimize make changes on your website, you must put it in theof your document. Now, let us say we have created a basic headline test. Besides, what exactly is going on under the hood?

 

• The web browser fetches the page and executes each of the lines.
• The Optimize tag is read and a JavaScript function requests information on various changes the variant should make to the webpage.
• The web page continues to go through the lines of coding and loads the page.
• A fast response comes back from the server-side with various necessary changes.
• Suddenly, the headline changes to the test version.

Learning Python

Python takes a bit longer to set up. And, you cannot run this programming language in the console, and you also cannot make various alterations to the front end in order to get by as a hacker. In order to install Python, you need to do a bit of code reading (depending on your system).

 

But Python codes are readable, clean, forgiving, and pretty easy to learn. You can also read a Python script like it is written in simple English. Here, you can easily check out the code from on how to scrape tweets:

Using Beautiful Soup (a web-scraping library) and Requests (an HTTP request library), the author can easily scrape and print tweets with 8 lines of code.

 

JavaScript can also do this by using the console or Node.js. Here I have given the similar post about achieving the same result using Cheerio and Node.js. Here is the code:

 

JS just is not as elegant. But, it also gets better once you get used to this. It may even “force” you to easily understand more about how the web app works, which is a good thing. But Python programming language really is nice to look at.

Let’s Wrap Up:

I hope in this article, you get a clear idea about JavaScript and Python programming language. In this article. I compared both of these programming languages to various factors and aspects. 

If you are an entrepreneur and want to have your own web and mobile app on JavaScript or Python, you can contact a software development company that follows the latest trends and technologies of both of these languages in providing the best in domain services.