Java vs JavaScript vs Python

Overview

Python

Stacks262.8K

Followers205.4K

Votes6.9K

GitHub Stars69.7K

Forks33.3K

Java

Stacks148.0K

Followers105.5K

Votes3.7K

JavaScript

Stacks392.2K

Followers284.0K

Votes8.1K

Java vs JavaScript vs Python: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Java, JavaScript, and Python. These three programming languages are widely used in web development and have different characteristics that set them apart.

Syntax: Java and Python have more similar syntax compared to JavaScript. Java and Python use curly braces for code blocks, whereas JavaScript uses curly braces for object literals and control structures. Additionally, Python uses indentation to define code blocks, whereas Java and JavaScript use curly braces.
Typing: Java and Python are statically typed languages, meaning that variable types are checked at compile-time. On the other hand, JavaScript is a dynamically typed language, where variable types are checked at runtime. This difference allows JavaScript to be more flexible but can lead to some errors that are caught only during runtime.
Platform: Java is platform-independent and designed to run on a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This means that Java code can be written once and run on any operating system that has a JVM. JavaScript, on the other hand, is primarily used for web development and runs within a web browser. Python is a versatile language that can be used for web development, data analysis, scientific computing, and more.
Concurrency: Java has built-in support for multithreading and concurrency, which allows for efficient utilization of system resources. Python, on the other hand, has a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), which limits the execution of multiple threads at the same time. JavaScript is single-threaded but supports asynchronous programming through callbacks, promises, and async/await.
Object-Oriented Programming: Java and Python are strongly object-oriented languages, where everything is an object that belongs to a class or has attributes and methods. JavaScript, although it supports object-oriented programming, is prototype-based, meaning that objects can directly inherit properties from other objects without the need for classes.
Libraries and Frameworks: Java has a vast collection of libraries and frameworks for different purposes, including enterprise development, Android app development, and more. Python also has a rich ecosystem with libraries and frameworks for a wide range of applications, such as data science (NumPy, pandas), web development (Django, Flask), and machine learning (TensorFlow, PyTorch). JavaScript has a thriving ecosystem with multiple frameworks for front-end development (React, Angular, Vue.js) and back-end development (Node.js, Express.js).

In summary, the key differences between Java, JavaScript, and Python lie in their syntax, typing, platform, concurrency, object-oriented programming support, and the availability of libraries and frameworks. Each language has its strengths and weaknesses, making it suitable for different use cases and development scenarios.

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Advice on Python, Java, JavaScript

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!

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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	JavaScript
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!	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.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 69.7K	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 33.3K	GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 262.8K	Stacks 148.0K	Stacks 392.2K
Followers 205.4K	Followers 105.5K	Followers 284.0K
Votes 6.9K	Votes 3.7K	Votes 8.1K
Pros & Cons
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 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 1670 Can be used on frontend/backend 1497 It's everywhere 1163 Lots of great frameworks 899 Fast 746 Light weight Cons 24 A constant moving target, too much churn 20 Horribly inconsistent 16 Javascript is the New PHP 9 No ability to monitor memory utilitization 8 Shows Zero output in case of ANY error
Integrations
Django	Spring	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Python, Java, JavaScript?

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.

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

Java vs JavaScript vs Python: What are the differences?

Introduction

Syntax: Java and Python have more similar syntax compared to JavaScript. Java and Python use curly braces for code blocks, whereas JavaScript uses curly braces for object literals and control structures. Additionally, Python uses indentation to define code blocks, whereas Java and JavaScript use curly braces.
Typing: Java and Python are statically typed languages, meaning that variable types are checked at compile-time. On the other hand, JavaScript is a dynamically typed language, where variable types are checked at runtime. This difference allows JavaScript to be more flexible but can lead to some errors that are caught only during runtime.
Platform: Java is platform-independent and designed to run on a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This means that Java code can be written once and run on any operating system that has a JVM. JavaScript, on the other hand, is primarily used for web development and runs within a web browser. Python is a versatile language that can be used for web development, data analysis, scientific computing, and more.
Concurrency: Java has built-in support for multithreading and concurrency, which allows for efficient utilization of system resources. Python, on the other hand, has a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), which limits the execution of multiple threads at the same time. JavaScript is single-threaded but supports asynchronous programming through callbacks, promises, and async/await.
Object-Oriented Programming: Java and Python are strongly object-oriented languages, where everything is an object that belongs to a class or has attributes and methods. JavaScript, although it supports object-oriented programming, is prototype-based, meaning that objects can directly inherit properties from other objects without the need for classes.
Libraries and Frameworks: Java has a vast collection of libraries and frameworks for different purposes, including enterprise development, Android app development, and more. Python also has a rich ecosystem with libraries and frameworks for a wide range of applications, such as data science (NumPy, pandas), web development (Django, Flask), and machine learning (TensorFlow, PyTorch). JavaScript has a thriving ecosystem with multiple frameworks for front-end development (React, Angular, Vue.js) and back-end development (Node.js, Express.js).

Java vs JavaScript vs Python

Overview

Java vs JavaScript vs Python: What are the differences?