Go vs PHP vs Python

Overview

PHP

Stacks147.4K

Followers82.9K

Votes4.6K

GitHub Stars39.6K

Forks8.0K

Python

Stacks262.9K

Followers205.4K

Votes6.9K

GitHub Stars69.7K

Forks33.3K

Golang

Stacks24.0K

Followers13.9K

Votes3.3K

GitHub Stars130.7K

Forks18.4K

Go vs PHP vs Python: What are the differences?

Efficiency and Performance: One key difference between Go and PHP/Python is their efficiency and performance. Go is known for its fast execution speed and efficient resource allocation, making it ideal for high-performance applications. PHP and Python, on the other hand, may not be as fast as Go and can be slower when it comes to handling resource-intensive tasks or large-scale applications.
Concurrency and Multithreading: Another significant difference is in how these programming languages handle concurrency and multithreading. Go has built-in support for concurrent programming through goroutines and channels, allowing developers to write concurrent code more easily. PHP and Python, on the other hand, require additional libraries or modules to achieve similar functionality, and their support for multithreading might be limited or restricted.
Type Systems: Go, PHP, and Python have different type systems. Go has a statically typed system, where variables should have explicitly declared types and are checked at compile-time, ensuring greater reliability and type safety. PHP, in contrast, has a dynamically typed system, allowing variables to hold values of any type and checking types at runtime. Python falls somewhere in between, with a dynamically typed system that can also perform optional static type checking using external tools.
Syntax and Language Design: Go, PHP, and Python have different syntaxes and language designs. Go has a more minimalistic and straightforward syntax, aiming for simplicity and readability. PHP has a more traditional C-like syntax but with its own unique features and conventions. Python, in contrast, has a more concise and expressive syntax, focusing on code readability and using indentation for block structures.
Standard Library and Ecosystem: Each language has its own standard library and ecosystem, which can influence the available third-party libraries, frameworks, and tools. Go has a well-documented standard library that covers a wide range of functionalities, making it easier to build standalone applications. PHP has a extensive ecosystem with a myriad of libraries and frameworks specifically designed for web development. Python also has a large ecosystem with libraries for various domains such as scientific computing, machine learning, and web development.
Community and Industry Adoption: The communities and industry adoptions of these languages also vary. Go has gained popularity and has a strong presence in the backend and cloud development communities, with many high-profile companies using it for their systems. PHP, on the other hand, has been widely used in web development for years and has a large community. Python has become increasingly popular in various domains, including web development, data analysis, and artificial intelligence, and has a vibrant and diverse community.

In summary, Go stands out for its efficiency, built-in support for concurrency, and statically typed system, while PHP and Python have their strengths in terms of ecosystem and community adoption.

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Advice on PHP, Python, Golang

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

Mike

Enterprise Architect at Warby Parker

Dec 22, 2019

Decided

When I was evaluating languages to write this app in, I considered either Python or JavaScript at the time. I find Ruby very pleasant to read and write, and the Ruby community has built out a wide variety of test tools and approaches, helping e deliver better software faster. Along with Rails, and the Ruby-first Heroku support, this was an easy decision.

258k views258k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

PHP	Python	Golang
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.	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.	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.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 39.6K	GitHub Stars 69.7K	GitHub Stars 130.7K
GitHub Forks 8.0K	GitHub Forks 33.3K	GitHub Forks 18.4K
Stacks 147.4K	Stacks 262.9K	Stacks 24.0K
Followers 82.9K	Followers 205.4K	Followers 13.9K
Votes 4.6K	Votes 6.9K	Votes 3.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 954 Large community 820 Open source 767 Easy deployment 488 Great frameworks 387 The best glue on the web Cons 21 So easy to learn, good practices are hard to find 16 Inconsistent API 8 Fragmented community 6 Not secure 3 Hard to debug	Pros 1186 Great libraries 966 Readable code 848 Beautiful code 789 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 20 Package management is a mess	Pros 557 High-performance 398 Simple, minimal syntax 365 Fun to write 305 Easy concurrency support via goroutines 273 Fast compilation times Cons 43 You waste time in plumbing code catching errors 25 Verbose 23 Packages and their path dependencies are braindead 16 Google's documentations aren't beginer friendly 15 Dependency management when working on multiple projects
Integrations
Laravel JavaScript	Django	Revel Martini

What are some alternatives to PHP, Python, Golang?

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.

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.

Java

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!

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.

Clojure

Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.

Related Comparisons

Go vs PHP vs Python: What are the differences?

Efficiency and Performance: One key difference between Go and PHP/Python is their efficiency and performance. Go is known for its fast execution speed and efficient resource allocation, making it ideal for high-performance applications. PHP and Python, on the other hand, may not be as fast as Go and can be slower when it comes to handling resource-intensive tasks or large-scale applications.
Concurrency and Multithreading: Another significant difference is in how these programming languages handle concurrency and multithreading. Go has built-in support for concurrent programming through goroutines and channels, allowing developers to write concurrent code more easily. PHP and Python, on the other hand, require additional libraries or modules to achieve similar functionality, and their support for multithreading might be limited or restricted.
Type Systems: Go, PHP, and Python have different type systems. Go has a statically typed system, where variables should have explicitly declared types and are checked at compile-time, ensuring greater reliability and type safety. PHP, in contrast, has a dynamically typed system, allowing variables to hold values of any type and checking types at runtime. Python falls somewhere in between, with a dynamically typed system that can also perform optional static type checking using external tools.
Syntax and Language Design: Go, PHP, and Python have different syntaxes and language designs. Go has a more minimalistic and straightforward syntax, aiming for simplicity and readability. PHP has a more traditional C-like syntax but with its own unique features and conventions. Python, in contrast, has a more concise and expressive syntax, focusing on code readability and using indentation for block structures.
Standard Library and Ecosystem: Each language has its own standard library and ecosystem, which can influence the available third-party libraries, frameworks, and tools. Go has a well-documented standard library that covers a wide range of functionalities, making it easier to build standalone applications. PHP has a extensive ecosystem with a myriad of libraries and frameworks specifically designed for web development. Python also has a large ecosystem with libraries for various domains such as scientific computing, machine learning, and web development.
Community and Industry Adoption: The communities and industry adoptions of these languages also vary. Go has gained popularity and has a strong presence in the backend and cloud development communities, with many high-profile companies using it for their systems. PHP, on the other hand, has been widely used in web development for years and has a large community. Python has become increasingly popular in various domains, including web development, data analysis, and artificial intelligence, and has a vibrant and diverse community.

In summary, Go stands out for its efficiency, built-in support for concurrency, and statically typed system, while PHP and Python have their strengths in terms of ecosystem and community adoption.

Go vs PHP vs Python

Overview