Python and JS have a lot in common, but some notable differences are also.
There are ample job opportunities for both Python and JavaScript developers. So, choosing one of the two programming languages to start your programming career is a good option.
What are the main differences between Python and JavaScript?
From a starting point of view, learning Python is much easier than learning JavaScript. In fact, one of the main design goals of the Python programming language is the ease of understanding and implementation.
Before we go on and start listing the various differences between Python and JavaScript, let’s first take a quick look at the two competitors.
What is Python?
Python is an interpreted, strongly typed programming language with dynamic semantics and object-oriented design. It’s easy to read and easy to implement. Python can also act like a scripting language for the likes of Perl and Ruby for building web applications. The beauty of Python is that it allows programmers to use a range of programming styles to develop both complex and straightforward programs. Also, Python is a “battery-on” programming language, which simply means the wide variety of modules it comes with.
What is JavaScript?
JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented programming language widely used to create dynamic web pages. It is standardized in the ECMAScript Language Specification. Besides OOP, JS also supports two other programming paradigms, namely functional and imperative. JS is commonly used in a web browser to provide dynamic functionality that cannot be achieved with CSS and HTML.
JavaScript also supports dates, text, and regular expressions to build standard web applications. Although JavaScript was initially used for front-end development, it is also used for back-end development. Therefore JavaScript provides comprehensive development. In fact, with Node.js, JS can also be used to develop standalone desktop applications.
JavaScript V/S Python
Learning JavaScript does not require a good knowledge of the Java programming language. However, it can definitely help make the learning process easier.
JavaScript supports arrays as a built-in data type. Although there is no native support for arrays in Python, there is a workaround for implementing arrays in Python. This is achieved by using a list closest to the array Python must provide.
Python lists are similar to another data type available in the programming language, tuples. The most crucial difference between a list and a tuple is that the former is mutable, and the latter is immutable. JavaScript objects have properties that can be composed of base attributes.
This allows you to define a property. The descriptor protocol, which uses getter and setter functions, will enable you to define an attribute in the Python programming language. JavaScript uses curly braces to determine blocks of code. On the other hand, Python uses indentation to define blocks of code. Although JavaScript has a ‘;’ acting as an operator terminator, Python has a newline.
JavaScript must be encoded as UTF-16. Also, there is no native programming language support for handling raw bytes. If no encoding format is specified, the default Python source is ASCII.
Python throws an exception if a function is called with incorrect parameters. It also accepts additional syntax for passing parameters. JavaScript doesn’t care if the process is called with the correct parameters or not. This is because, by default, all missing parameters in JS are set to “undefined”; in addition, if there are additional arguments, they are treated as particular arguments by JavaScript.
The Python programming language has built-in hash tables called dictionaries, sets, etc. Unlike Python, JavaScript has no built-in support for hash tables in any form.
Python is a strongly typed programming language; by contrast, JavaScript is weakly typed and thus offers implicit data type conversions.
Both Python and JavaScript provide support for inheritance. However, the difference lies in their types. While JavaScript uses a prototype-based inheritance model, Python uses a class-based inheritance model. Another difference between Python and JavaScript is that Python cannot inherit from instances, unlike JS.
Besides front-end and server-side development, JavaScript is also a good option for mobile development. However, Python is not suitable for mobile app development.
Python is known as the “battery-powered programming language” because it comes with several modules. In addition, it has many libraries for data analysis, machine learning, and scientific computing. In contrast, JavaScript has fewer modules like date, JSON, and math. Additional functionality for JS is available through the host environment, which usually includes a web browser and rarely something else like an operating system.
Data types in Python are divided into mutable and immutable. For example, a collection is a mutable data type, and a list is immutable.
Mutable objects are those whose values can be changed after they have been assigned values. Conversely, immutable objects cannot change matters.
Unlike the Python programming language, JavaScript has no concept of variability. In JavaScript, you only have floating-point variables.
In contrast, the Python programming language has multiple numeric data types, such as int, fixed-point decimal, and floating-point numbers.
For each method, Python has an automatic argument as the first argument. On the other hand, JavaScript has this method for accessing an object.
Both Python and JavaScript adopt a multi-paradigm approach, which means that both Python and JavaScript provide functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods. However, Python has several aspects of a procedural programming language, while JavaScript does not.
Get the REPL by installing Python on your system. However, JavaScript does not have built-in REPLs. This is because JS mostly runs inside the browser. However, we can get the REPL for JavaScript by installing Node.js.
JavaScript is ideal for building your own website or application. On the other hand, Python is perfect for tasks involving data analysis, machine learning, and math operations. Each language has its own use cases. However, you can get pretty much anything with Python that you can use with JavaScript.
Both programming languages have many aspects, such as the multi-paradigm approach and lexical scoping. At the same time, several differences between them cannot be ignored.
There is no shortage of libraries and extensions for Python and JavaScript to provide more built-in functionality. While they both have different job opportunities, Python is better represented in the market and easy to learn.