Python vs JavaScript
When comparing Python vs JavaScript, the Slant community recommends Python for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Python is ranked 1st while JavaScript is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Python is:
Python's popularity and beginner friendliness has led to a wealth of tutorials and example code on the internet. This means that when beginners have questions, they're very likely to be able to find an answer on their own just by searching. This is an advantage over some languages that are not as popular or covered as in-depth by its users.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lots of tutorials
Python's popularity and beginner friendliness has led to a wealth of tutorials and example code on the internet. This means that when beginners have questions, they're very likely to be able to find an answer on their own just by searching. This is an advantage over some languages that are not as popular or covered as in-depth by its users.
Pro Active and helpful community
Python has an active and helpful community, such as the comp.lang.python Google Groups, StackOverflow, reddit, etc.
Pro Easy to get started
On top of the wealth of tutorials and documentation, and the fact that it ships with a sizeable standard library, Python also ships with both an IDE (Integrated Development Environment: A graphical environment for editing running and debugging your code); as well as a text-based live interpreter. Both help users to get started trying out code immediately, and give users immediate feedback that aids learning.
Pro Comes with extensive libraries
Python ships with a large standard library, including modules for everything from writing graphical applications, running servers, and doing unit testing. This means that beginners won't need to spend time searching for tools and libraries just to get started on their projects.
Pro Can be used in many domains
Python can be used across virtually all domains: scientific, network, games, graphics, animation, web development, machine learning, and data science.
Pro Clear syntax
Python's syntax is very clear and readable, making it excellent for beginners. The lack of extra characters like semicolons and curly braces reduces distractions, letting beginners focus on the meaning of the code. Significant whitespace also means that all code is properly and consistently indented.
The language also uses natural english words such as 'and' and 'or', meaning that beginners need to learn fewer obscure symbols. On top of this, Python's dynamic type system means that code isn't cluttered with type information, which would further distract beginners from what the code is doing.
Pro Cross-platform
Installs and works on every major operating systems if not already installed by default (Linux, macOS).
Pro Has many libraries for scientific computing, data mining and machine learning
Python is commonly used in data science and has many libraries for scientific computing, such as numpy, pandas, matplotlib, etc.
Pro Good documentation
The Python community has put a lot of work into creating excellent documentation filled with plain english describing functionality. Contrast this with other languages, such as Java, where documentation often contains a dry enumeration of the API.
As a random example, consider GUI toolkit documentation - the tkinter documentation reads almost like a blog article, answering questions such as 'How do I...', whereas Java's Swing documentation contains dry descriptions that effectively reiterate the implementation code. On top of this, most functions contain 'Doc Strings', which mean that documentation is often immediately available, without even the need to search the internet.
Pro Very similar to pseudo-code
When learning Computer Science concepts such as algorithms and data structures, many texts use pseudo-code. Having a language such as Python whose syntax is very similar to pseudo-code is an obvious advantage that makes learning easier.
Pro It's really simple
It's very simple for understanding how programming works. If you don't like programming in Python, you probably won't like programming. It is a good way to find out with little investment. If you like, it is a great language. I wouldn't look for a language that has everything you eventually need to know in programming, such as static typing, in my first language. It should be easy to learn. You can pick up the hard stuff later if you tackle C or C++ or assembler. It will make learning them much easier. If you start with them, you might quit programming due to the difficulty of learning.
Pro Easy to find jobs
Python's popularity also means that it's commonly in use in production at many companies - it's even one of the primary languages in use at Google. Furthermore, as a concise scripting language, it's very commonly used for smaller tasks, as an alternative to shell scripts.
Python was also designed to make it easy to interface with other languages such as C, and so it is often used as 'glue code' between components written in other languages.
Pro Advanced community projects
There are outstanding projects being actively developed in Python. Projects such as the following to name a random four:
- Django: a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
- iPython: a rich architecture for interactive computing with shells, a notebook and which is embeddable as well as wrapping and able to wrap libraries written in other languages.
- Mercurial: a free, distributed source control management tool. It efficiently handles projects of any size and offers an easy and intuitive interface.
- PyPy: a fast, compliant alternative implementation of the Python language (2.7.3 and 3.2.3) with several advantages and distinct features including a Just-in-Time compiler for speed, reduced memory use, sandboxing, micro-threads for massive concurrency, ...
When you move on from being a learner you can still stay with Python for those advanced tasks.
Pro Supports various programming paradigms
Python supports three 'styles' of programming:
- Procedural programming.
- Object orientated programming.
- Functional programming.
All three styles can be seamlessly interchanged and can be learnt in harmony in Python rather than being forced into one point of view, which is helpful for easing confusion over the debate amongst programmers over which programming paradigm is best, as developers will get the chance to try all of them.
Pro Good introduction to data structures
Python's built-in support and syntax for common collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets, as well as supporting features like list comprehensions, foreach loops, map, filter, and others, makes their use much easier to get into for beginners. Python's support for Object Orient Programming, but with dynamic typing, also makes the topic of Data Structures much more accessible, as it takes the focus off of more tedious aspects, such as type casting and explicitly defined interfaces.
Python's convention of only hiding methods through prefacing them with underscores further takes the focus off of details such as Access Modifiers common in languages such as Java and C++, allowing beginners to focus on the core concepts, without much worry for language specific implementation details.
Pro One right way to do things
One of the Guiding Principles of Python is that there should be only one obvious way to do things. This is helpful for beginners because it means that there is likely a best answer for questions about how things should be done.
Pro Easy to learn, More to Go
It is very easy to learn and it has community support and many categories available.
Pro Mobile versions
Mobile versions are available but can be difficult to find. Examples for android are pydroid and qpython
Pro Interpreters for JS, Microtontrollers, .Net , Java & others
Python is not limited to just be cross platform. It goes far beyond all high level languages since it can run on top of several other frameworks & architectures :
Examples of interpreters:
- Standard (PC Win/Lin/Mac, ARM, Raspberry, Smartphones): CPython usually, but some more specialized for smartphones: Kyvi, QPython, ...
- Web Browser JS : Brython, PyJS,
- .Net : IronPython
- Java: Jython
- Microcontrollers with WiFi like ESP8266 or ESP32: MicroPython
- Can be statically compiled (instead of interpreted) with Cython. (Do not mix up with cPython)
With python, you're sure your code can run (almost) everywhere, from 2€ computers to the most expensives.
So, for instance, with Jython you can access the Java libraries with Python language.
Pro Static typing via mypy
Python's syntax supports optional type annotations for use with a third-party static type checker, which can catch a certain class of bugs at compile time. This also makes it easier for beginners to gradually transition to statically typed languages instead of wrestling with the compiler from the start.
Pro Has features of both high and low level language
It is somewhere between C and Java.
Pro Best chances of earning most money
According to Quartz, Python programming skills on average earn $100,000 per year. Closely followed by Java, C++, JavaScript, C, and R with $90,000 per year and above.
Pro Easy for new users and experienced programmers
(If you can get over whitespace formatting)
Pro Import Turtle
Do something visually interesting in minutes by using the turtle standard library package.
Turtle graphics is a popular way for introducing programming to kids. It was part of the original Logo programming language developed by Wally Feurzig and Seymour Papert in 1966.
Imagine a robotic turtle starting at (0, 0) in the x-y plane. After an import turtle, give it the command turtle.forward(15), and it moves (on-screen!) 15 pixels in the direction it is facing, drawing a line as it moves. Give it the command turtle.right(25), and it rotates in-place 25 degrees clockwise.
Turtle can draw intricate shapes using programs that repeat simple moves.
from turtle import *
color('red', 'yellow')
begin_fill()
while True:
forward(200)
left(170)
if abs(pos()) < 1:
break
end_fill()
done()
Pro Includes pygame library
Want to start game development? No problem! Using pygame open-source library you can fast begin creating games without worrying about pointers or undefined behaviors which they exists in C/C++.
Pro No installation required
If you run a web browser you already have JavaScript installed and can get started right away. Modern browsers such as Chrome also have very powerful programming consoles built into them.
Aside from the browser console, you can also use online Javascript playgrounds such as JS Bin and JS Fiddle. Even from a tablet.
Pro Required for web development
If you are looking to create web projects, you will have to learn Javascript in order to develop the client side code. If you learn the foundations of programming in JavaScript you can reapply that education later in building web applications.
Pro Massive ecosystem
JavaScript has one of the largest programming ecosystems, as shown by the being the most popular language for projects on GitHub. As there are so many projects written in JavaScript there are lots of libraries available to build off of and many of them are written to be easy to use and integrate into other projects.
There are also lots of resources available for learning JavaScript. Other than traditional tutorials, language learning sites such as Codecademy have JavaScript courses. The Mozilla Developer Database also serves as a great resource for learning about the standard libraries built into JavaScript.
Pro Easy to build an application
By using the UI capabilities in HTML and CSS you can develop substantial applications with graphical interfaces more quickly and with less effort than in other languages which would require you to learn a windowing library.
Building a useful application is one of the best ways to learn a new language and because of the low learning curve for creating applications you can create more substatial programs and learn more practical programming priciple faster.
Pro Runs on both the browser and the server
With Node.js, it is now possible to run JavaScript as a web server. This would allow you to be able to create server based applications sooner than would if you had to learn a separate programming language as well for server side code.
As JavaScript is the only language supported by web browsers it puts it in the unique situation of being the only programming language that's available on both the client side and server side.
Pro First-class functions with lexical closures
While certainly not the only language with these features, this pro alone is so powerful that it compensates for most of JavaScript's problems. You'll learn to use closures and higher-order functions well in JavaScript, because you have to. And then you can generalize this knowledge to any other language that has these, and the good ones do.
Pro High demand for JavaScript developers
If you're looking for a career as a developer, JavaScript is the place to focus your attention. There is a huge demand for good developers especially in frameworks such as React and Angular.
Pro Complete dev stack can be run online
With codepen.io and other prototyping tools, you can learn Javascript from a mobile device. You don't even need a computer. It can be learned from an internet cafe or public library.
Pro JSON is native to JS
JSON is arguably a "must-learn". With JS, that's one less additional syntax to learn.
Pro Very good debugger
Has a built in debugger with break points, watches that work on local values, and a console that you can use to edit anything at any time. Both in the browser (eg: Chrome), and server (eg: Nodejs).
Pro Can be very simple (teachable)
By setting a few ground-rules (effectively coding in a subset of JS), JS is one of the simplest languages to learn (requiring very few must-learn prerequisite concepts).
Pro Great tools for development
Flow, JSHint/ESLint, Babel, npm, etc.
Pro Several Platforms to use the web stack and JS to create multi-platform apps
Opens the door to native application development as well as just websites. Use with React Native, Weex or Quasar (Vue), PhoneGap or Cordova, NativeScript... (etc) to build native apps. Use mostly the same code base for multi-platform and web.
Pro Atwood's Law "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."
May also be a con.
Pro Modern ESNext is far better than the JS of days past
Modern JS has made great strides, and can be targerted to older (or non-standard) browsers using Babel. There are new language constructs that can make programming in JS comfortable.; e.g.: async / await ( <3 ).
Pro Instant gratification
While it's easy to argue that Python will give you 'instant gratification' (while actually ruining your understanding of good programming practices), JavaScript is far better in this regard. Make a small change to a page and it's immediately visible in the browser. You can throw in a JavaScript library like jQuery with minimal fuss.
Pro Speed (most implementations)
JS/ES is in the running for the fastest interpreted language given the optimizations and JIT integration of popular implementations. On the other hand, it fails utterly when compared with compiled (to native or VM code) languages.
Pro Integrates very well with UE4
Coding an immersive 3D game can retain the attention of new programmers. ncsoft/Unreal.js.
Pro Prototype based Object Oriented System
Being object oriented, it supports the predominate and powerful programming approach. Being prototype based, it provides an intuitive approach to OOP. Whereas other popular languages use classes, which focus on thinking in the abstract, Javascript's prototypes allow you to focus on thinking in the concrete.
For example, in a prototypical language, you think of a rectangle, and define it. You now have a rectangle. Let's say you want a red rectangle, you copy the rectangle and give it the property red. Want a blue one? Copy rectangle again give it a blue. Big blue rectangle? Copy blue rectangle and make it big. In a class-based language, first you describe a rectangle, describe a red rectangle as a type of rectangle, describe blue and big blue rectangles, and now that you have described them, you must create instances of them, and only then do you have the rectangles. Essentially: Classes are factories for objects, prototypes are objects themselves, and the latter method was created to be more intuitive, which is particularly advantageous to beginners.
Pro C-like syntax
After learning Javascript, you will feel at home in other languages as C-like syntax is very common.
Pro One of the most underestimated languages
deviously simple in syntax, yet highly powerful in paradigms, this language does not force you to the (actually intrinsically broken) object oriented paradigm, has a healthy dose of functional programming inside, and does not bloat the keyword space. Good javascript is all about structure. Bad javascript is all about lazy hipsters not taking the time to learn 'javascript, the good parts', a must read.
Pro Extremely popular
JavaScript usually tops the lists for most popular languages in use today and rightly so. It's used almost everywhere and it's in high demand, making it very easy to find a job for anyone who knows JavaScript. This helps make it desirable for a first language, as it will often be used in the future.
Pro The most used language in the whole Solar System in amount of scripts/applications
Because it runs in many different environments, it is the most used language in the world.
Cons
Con Not good for mobile development
You can use frameworks like Kivy, but if your ultimate goal is to write mobile apps Python may not be the best first choice.
Con Inelegant and messy language design
The first impression given by well-chosen Python sample code is quite attractive. However, very soon a lack of unifying philosophy / theory behind the language starts to show more and more. This includes issues with OOP such as lack of consistency in the use of object methods vs. functions (e.g., is it x.sort() or sorted(x), or both for lists?), made worse by too many functions in global name space. Method names via mangling and the init(self) look and feel like features just bolted on an existing simpler language.
Con Language fragmentation (this is finally starting to go away)
A large subset of the Python community still uses / relies upon Python 2, which is considered a legacy implementation by the Python authors. Some libraries still have varying degrees of support depending on which version of Python you use. There are syntactical differences between the versions.
Con Worst language design ever
Instead of sticking to a certain paradigm, the original writer of the language couldn't make up his mind, and took something from everywhere, but messing it up as he went by. This is possibly one of the worst balanced languages ever. People who pollute their mind with Python and think it's the next best thing after sliced bread, will have to un-learn a lot of garbage 'pythonesque' habits to actually learn how to program. It's not because the academic world uses it a lot, that it's a good language. It says something about the inability of the academic world to write decent code, actually.
Con Hard to debug other people's code
As the structure of Python code is based on conventions many developers are not following them and so it is difficult to follow/extract the design of not trivial application from the code. While this is a con, I see it in other languages as well. It seems to depend on the programmer. Most people don't learn conventions first, they just start programming. Unless you work for someone who insists you follow the conventions, you will probably go with what you like. You might never look at the conventions.
Con Multi-threading can introduce unwanted complexity
Although the principals of multi-threading in Python are good, the simplicity can be deceptive and multi-threaded applications are not always easy to create when multiple additional factors are accounted for. Multi-thread processes have to be explicitly created manually.
Con The process of shipping/distributing software is reatively complicated
Once you have you program the process of having a way to send it to others to use is fragile and fragmented. Python is still looking for the right solution for this with still differences in opinion. These differences are a huge counter to Python's mantra of "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."
Con Limited support for functional programming
While Python imports some very useful and elegant bits and pieces from FP (such as list comprehensions, higher-order functions such as map and filter), the language's support for FP falls short of the expectations raised by included features. For example, no tail call optimisation or proper lambdas. Referential transparency can be destroyed in unexpected ways even when it seems to be guaranteed. Function composition is not built into the core language. Etc.
Con Unflexible userbase
You will be expected to rigidly stick to the coding practices and to do everything by-the-numbers. One of the most common complaints I heard from people who left Plone, which is Python based, to Drupal, which is PHP based, is the community is more like a frat house than a community. If you look for help, make sure you follow the rules of whatever type of group you are requesting help from.
Con Too opinionated for a general-purpose programming language
While it's a good language to learn and use after you have mastered a couple of other less rigid programming languages, it's definitely not good for first-time learners. Both the language itself and its community have made it quite clear that you should do everything the "Pythonic way" to get the best results, that it feels more like an opinionated framework instead of a general-purpose programming language, which means if you are a first-time learner and getting too "tuned" to the "Pythonic way" it will be much harder for you to learn other less-opinionated languages compared to the other way around. Like any programming languages and/or frameworks, I'd recommend first-time learners to learn less opinionated ones first to open up your mind, then learn some of the more opinionated ones to increase productivity for specific fields of works.
After all, programming languages are just some utilities for the human mind to interface with the computers, and there are more suitable tools for different tasks, and you should master the "Pythonic way" (after you already have adequate experience in computer programming) instead of locking your mind too close to the "Pythonic way" as a first-time learner.
Con Abstraction to the point of hinderance
Python is abstracted far enough that if it's your first language, it will be harder to pick up lower level languages later versus going the other direction.
Con Does not teach you about data types
Since Python is a dynamically typed language, you don't have to learn about data types if you start using Python as your first language. Data types being one of the most important concepts in programming. This also will cause trouble in the long run when you will have to (inevitably) learn and work with a statically typed language because you will be forced to learn the type system from scratch.
Con Might not be very future-proof
Lots of features that will probably be crucial as time goes (good support for parallelism for example) are missing or are not that well-supported in Python. Since 2.x and 3.x still exist, be prepared to switch if something makes 3.x take off in the future.
Con Significant whitespace
While proper formatting is essential for any programmer, beginners often have trouble understanding the need and lack the discipline to do it. Add to that all those editors that randomly convert N spaces (usually 8) to tabs and you get an instant disaster. You may need to find yourself an editor/IDE you like and carry it with you on a thumb drive, which isn't a bad idea anyway.
Con It is best suited for scripting, but so are many other languages
i.e. running js as a script in a node is trivial. Even languages that were not meant to run as a script are easy to use as a scripting language with just a .sh file.
Con Version Confusion with V2.x and V3.x
Con Bad for games
Python has a lot of frameworks like pygame, but exporting the game is hard and building files like .exe gets very large and have a bad performance on bad computers.
Con Not a serious coding language
If you consider it your first language, better pick Julia!
Con Fails in comparison to Nim
Everywhere that counts, Nim is superior, according their people. Nim should be standing where Python is. It is only cruel fate and the maneuvers of the cabal that Nim is not standing over Python in victory.
Con Multi-threaded programs are too slow
Because of the GIL, multi-threaded programs run too slow, in an already slow interpreted language.
Con Moving large blocks of code in whitespace sensitive languages is scary
Quoting inventor of the V language: "V's syntax is cleaner with fewer rules. Lack of significant whitespace improves readability and maintainability of large code bases and makes generating code much easier. From my experience of working with a huge Python code base, moving large blocks of code in whitespace sensitive languages is scary."
Con Assignment
Heavily relies on assignment, with no distinction between defining the variable and assigning the value. This makes it necessary to introduce rather complex environmental model of computation.
Con Many errors pass silently
JavaScript looks for every possible way to treat the code you write as runnable and is very reluctant to point out likely errors. For example, you have call a function with too many arguments, the extra arguments are simply discarded.
Con Easy to accidentally use globals
If you forget a var
or new
, you can clobber the global scope. For tiny scripts (JavaScript's original use case) globals are great, but for larger applications globals are generally regarded as a Bad Thing. This is because changes to one small part of a program can randomly break things anywhere else. These kinds of bugs are notoriously hard to find.
Con Does not teach you about data types
Since JavaScript is a weakly typed language, you don't have to learn about data types if you start using JavaScript as your first language. Data types being one of the most important concepts in programming. This will also cause trouble in the long run when you will have to (inevitably) learn and work with a strongly or statically typed language because you will be forced to learn the type system from scratch.
Con Weird type coercions
'5' - 1 == 4
, but '5' + 1 == 51
. There are other examples that make even less sense.
Con Complex
JavaScript has a long litany of warts and gotchas. JavaScript will bite you if you're just a wee bit careless. You have to exercise a great deal of caution and awareness. You either have to know the entire 545-page ES6 spec to avoid them all, or use a linter to help restrict you from using the bad parts (and you still have to be familiar with the language), but beginners don't know these things. (Linters are also prone to time-wasting false positives.) This is a significant cognitive burden on even the experienced programmer (as if coding wasn’t hard enough already), but try learning to program in the first place on top of all of this and you'll understand that JavaScript is a terrible choice for the beginner.
Con Easy to fall into bad manners and bad mind structure
It wouldn't consolidate a good mind structure for moving to other languages. Too open.
Con Each browser has its own quirks when executing the same code in some cases
Beginner programmers often make the mistake of coding something, seeing it works in the browser they tested it in, and then scratching their heads when it doesn't work in another browser. Ideally you'd want a language that works consistently across all platforms in order to be able to focus more on the programming and less on the underlying environment. It just takes time away from learning and forces you to spend time figuring out why this worked in browser X but not browser Y.
Con The constant churn of tooling and language
Trying to keep up=javascript fatigue. You won't have time to learn anything else if this is your first language, and you will probably think all programmers are crazy. Plus web assembly may open the door for better alternatives.
Con Very confusing to read
Con The "this" keyword doesn't mean what you think it means
this
is bound to whatever object called the function. Unless you invoke it as a method. Unless you invoke it as a constructor. Unless it's an arrow function.
Con Limited standard library
Much often needed functionality is not in the standard library. (Contrast with Python.) However, there are well established libraries such as Lodash, to fill the gap (however, due to the diverse/fractured ecosystem it may not be clear what library to use).
Con Many tutorials, code, and resources, are structured for older ES5 code
Con Asynchronous coding is not easy for beginners
JavaScript can work synchronously but its current use is mainly around asynchronous instructions, and it's surely not a good way to start learning programming.
Con The `null` and `undefined` objects aren't really objects
Therefore, attempts to call methods on them will fail. This is especially frustrating since these are often returned instead of throwing exceptions. So a failure may appear far away from the actual cause, which makes bugs very hard to find.
Con Array-like objects
Many cases when you should get an Array, you just get an Array-like object instead and none of the Array methods work on it.
Con Fast moving
The language and the web platform move fast these days. this makes it difficult for students as there is a lot of fragmentation and outdated information.
Con Numbers that begin with 0 are assumed octal
This is very surprising for beginners. Especially since 00
through 07
seem to work just fine. And this isn't just for hardcoded numbers. The parseInt()
function has the same problem, but only on some systems.
Con Good tools are pretty much a MUST for new programmers
You really want to be using a good editor (light IDE) and a linter, type checker (e.g.:Flow), etc. until you grok the language. And choosing / setting-up that development environment is it's own learning curve. If taught in a classroom, using a subset of JS with solid tools, there is an argument that JS could be an ideal first language... however, that is a lot of ceremony to protect the new programmer from JS gotchas. But without the tools, JS can be a very painful painful first language (trying to figure out why your code isn't doing what you intended).
Con The language itself is not very appealing to developers.
JS is one of the most dreaded languages as it was designed for the purpose of becoming just an scripting language for a browser. It was never intended to take over as the leading technology in web development, thus the language has been streched past its own capabilities. A beginer should learn something else first, something that is better conceived and refined.
Con Counter-intuitive type conversion
JavaScript is rather inconsistent when dealing with different types. For example, when working with the + operator and two numbers, they will be added, two strings will be concatenated:
3+5; // 8;
"Hello "+"world"; // "Hello world"
When using +
with a string and a non-string operand, the non-string operand is converted to a string and the result is concatenated:
"the answer is "+42; // "the answer is 42"
"this is "+true; // "this is true"
In any other case (except for Date) the operands are converted to numbers and the results are added:
1+true; // = 1+1 = 2;
null+false; // = 0+0 = 0;
Con Fractured ecosystem
Angular, React, Ember, Meteor, Backbone, Knockout, Express, Mithril, Aurelia. The web frameworks pass in and out of fashion too quickly to keep up with. The endless civil wars are becoming tiresome.
Con Has really bad parts you're better off avoiding altogether
But beginners won't know better. And even after you learn, you might have to deal with others' code that uses the bad stuff. JavaScript was originally developed in 10 days. It just wasn't designed that carefully.