C vs Java vs Python

Overview

Python

Stacks262.9K

Followers205.4K

Votes6.9K

GitHub Stars69.7K

Forks33.3K

Java

Stacks148.0K

Followers105.5K

Votes3.7K

C lang

Stacks14.9K

Followers4.2K

Votes253

C vs Java vs Python: What are the differences?

# Introduction
When comparing programming languages such as C, Java, and Python, there are several key differences in terms of syntax, functionality, and usage. Below are some of the main distinctions between these popular languages.

1. **Memory Management**: In C, programmers have to manually allocate and deallocate memory, which can lead to memory leaks if not handled correctly. On the other hand, Java and Python have built-in garbage collection mechanisms that automatically manage memory allocation and deallocation, making them more convenient and less error-prone.

2. **Type System**: C is a statically typed language, meaning that data types must be declared at compile time. Java is also statically typed but allows for automatic type inference with the "var" keyword in newer versions. In contrast, Python is a dynamically typed language, allowing variables to change types during runtime.

3. **Concurrency**: C does not have built-in support for threading or concurrency, making it challenging to write concurrent programs. Java, on the other hand, provides built-in support for multithreading through the Java Concurrency API. Python has a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) that limits the execution of multiple threads, making it less suitable for CPU-bound tasks but more suitable for I/O-bound tasks.

4. **Syntax**: C uses curly braces to define code blocks and semicolons to terminate statements. Java follows a similar syntax to C but enforces strict rules on code structure and formatting. Python, in contrast, uses indentation to define code blocks, making it more readable and concise compared to C and Java.

5. **Garbage Collection**: C does not have automatic garbage collection, requiring programmers to free memory explicitly to avoid memory leaks. Java and Python, on the other hand, have built-in garbage collection mechanisms that automatically reclaim memory, reducing the risk of memory leaks and simplifying memory management for developers.

6. **Platform Independence**: Java is platform-independent, thanks to its "write once, run anywhere" principle facilitated by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Python is also platform-independent to some extent due to its interpreted nature, but Java's bytecode compatibility across different platforms gives it a stronger platform-independent advantage.

In Summary, the key differences between C, Java, and Python lie in memory management, type system, concurrency support, syntax, garbage collection, and platform independence.

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Advice on Python, Java, C lang

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k

Comments

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Brent

CEO at DEFY Labs

Mar 7, 2020

Decided

Node.js has been growing in popularity, and the ability to access the global pool of Javascript developers is great. There is a decreased amount of effort for people to work across the frontend and backend, and the language itself is easy and works well for many common use cases.

Go was the other serious candidate, but it just hasn't been implemented in as many Production systems yet, and the best Go engineers I've known have been hackers, whereas we're building a robust analytics platform that requires more caution. Type safety is easily added with TypeScript, and NPM is awesomely handy.

369k views369k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Python	Java	C lang
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.	Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!	No description available.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 69.7K	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 33.3K	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 262.9K	Stacks 148.0K	Stacks 14.9K
Followers 205.4K	Followers 105.5K	Followers 4.2K
Votes 6.9K	Votes 3.7K	Votes 253
Pros & Cons
Pros 1188 Great libraries 967 Readable code 849 Beautiful code 790 Rapid development 692 Large community Cons 53 Still divided between python 2 and python 3 28 Performance impact 26 Poor syntax for anonymous functions 22 GIL 21 Package management is a mess	Pros 608 Great libraries 446 Widely used 401 Excellent tooling 396 Huge amount of documentation available 334 Large pool of developers available Cons 33 Verbosity 27 NullpointerException 17 Nightmare to Write 16 Overcomplexity is praised in community culture 12 Boiler plate code	Pros 69 Performance 49 Low-level 36 Portability 29 Hardware level 19 Embedded apps Cons 5 Low-level 3 No built in support for parallelism (e.g. map-reduce) 3 Lack of type safety 3 No built in support for concurrency
Integrations
Django	Spring	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Python, Java, C lang?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Rust

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

Related Comparisons

C vs Java vs Python: What are the differences?

# Introduction
When comparing programming languages such as C, Java, and Python, there are several key differences in terms of syntax, functionality, and usage. Below are some of the main distinctions between these popular languages.

1. **Memory Management**: In C, programmers have to manually allocate and deallocate memory, which can lead to memory leaks if not handled correctly. On the other hand, Java and Python have built-in garbage collection mechanisms that automatically manage memory allocation and deallocation, making them more convenient and less error-prone.

2. **Type System**: C is a statically typed language, meaning that data types must be declared at compile time. Java is also statically typed but allows for automatic type inference with the "var" keyword in newer versions. In contrast, Python is a dynamically typed language, allowing variables to change types during runtime.

3. **Concurrency**: C does not have built-in support for threading or concurrency, making it challenging to write concurrent programs. Java, on the other hand, provides built-in support for multithreading through the Java Concurrency API. Python has a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) that limits the execution of multiple threads, making it less suitable for CPU-bound tasks but more suitable for I/O-bound tasks.

4. **Syntax**: C uses curly braces to define code blocks and semicolons to terminate statements. Java follows a similar syntax to C but enforces strict rules on code structure and formatting. Python, in contrast, uses indentation to define code blocks, making it more readable and concise compared to C and Java.

5. **Garbage Collection**: C does not have automatic garbage collection, requiring programmers to free memory explicitly to avoid memory leaks. Java and Python, on the other hand, have built-in garbage collection mechanisms that automatically reclaim memory, reducing the risk of memory leaks and simplifying memory management for developers.

6. **Platform Independence**: Java is platform-independent, thanks to its "write once, run anywhere" principle facilitated by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Python is also platform-independent to some extent due to its interpreted nature, but Java's bytecode compatibility across different platforms gives it a stronger platform-independent advantage.

In Summary, the key differences between C, Java, and Python lie in memory management, type system, concurrency support, syntax, garbage collection, and platform independence.

C vs Java vs Python

Overview