In this article, we will learn the basics of Java, Python, and Node.js and the difference between them.
What is Java?
Java is a general-purpose, class-based, object-oriented programming language designed for having lesser implementation dependencies. It is a computing platform for application development. It is widely used for developing Java applications in laptops, data centers, game consoles, scientific supercomputers, cell phones, etc.
Features:
It is one of the easy-to-use programming languages to learn.
Write code once and run it on almost any computing platform.
Java is platform-independent. Some programs developed in one machine can be executed in another machine.
It is designed for building object-oriented applications.
It is a multithreaded language with automatic memory management.
It is created for the distributed environment of the Internet.
Advantages:
It is easy to learn and understand.
It is an Object-oriented language that helps to enhance the flexibility and reusability of the code.
Reduce security threats and risks by avoiding the use of explicit pointers.
It is cheap to develop and maintain.
It is a portable language due to its platform independence feature.
Disadvantages:
It is memory-consuming and is slower than a native language like C or C++.
Java works on storage and does not focus on the backup of data.
Require a major amount of memory space.
It has long and complex sentences that make it difficult to read and understand. This reduces the readability of the code.
What is Python?
Python is a computer programming language often used to build websites and software, automate tasks, and conduct data analysis. Python is a general-purpose language, meaning it can be used to create a variety of different programs and isn’t specialized for any specific problems. This versatility, along with its beginner-friendliness, has made it one of the most-used programming languages today
Advantages:
It is easy to read and understand the code.
It is productive language and helps developers to focus on solving the problem.
It executes the code line by line. It stops the execution if the error occurs.
The programmers do not need to worry about declaring the variable and their data types as it automatically assigns the data type during the execution.
Huge library of python and can find almost all the functions needed.
Disadvantages:
Line-by-line execution leads to slow execution.
Uses a large amount of memory.
Python is not memory efficient and it has slow processing power as compared to other languages.
A variable containing integer number may hold a string in the future, which can lead to Runtime Errors.
What is Node.js?
Node.js is an open source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side and networking applications. Node.js applications are written in JavaScript, and can be run within the Node.js runtime on OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.
Node.js also provides a rich library of various JavaScript modules which simplifies the development of web applications using Node.js to a great extent.
Features:
Operates on a single thread.
Asynchronous by default i.e., it operates in a non-blocking way.
The event-driven concept is similar to the concept of the callback function in asynchronous programming. The only difference is that the callback function executes once the asynchronous function returns its result and events are triggered on its associated event handler.
Node.js applications are highly scalable as they operate in an asynchronous (non-blocking) way.
Advantages:
Node.js is open source, so it’s free to use, and no need to pay for the license. There are also many open-source modules supported by Node.js.
It uses JavaScript as a programming language for both front-end and back-end which increase programmer productivity and code reusability.
You can scale your Node.js application by using two ways – Horizontal Scaling and Vertical Scaling, which help you to improve your application performance.
It provides better performance since Node.js I/O operations are non-blocking. Also, it uses the V8 JavaScript engine to execute JavaScript code. V8 engine compiles the JS code directly into machine code which makes it fast.
Node.js supports caching of modules. Hence, when a Node.js module is requested for the first time, it is cached in the application memory. So next calls for loading the same module may not cause the module code to be executed again.
Node.js is based on JavaScript which can be executed on the client side as well as the server side. Also, it supports the exchange of data using JSON which is easily consumed by JavaScript. This makes it lightweight as compared to other frameworks. Node.js is open source. Hence you can extend it as per your need.
Using Node.js you can also develop RESTful services API easily.
It supports unit testing out of the box. You can use any JS unit testing framework like Jasmin to test your Node.js code.
Disadvantages:
It doesn’t support multi-threaded programming.
It doesn’t support very high computational intensive tasks. When it executes a long-running task, it will queue all the incoming requests to wait for execution, since it follows a JavaScript event loop that is single-threaded.
Node is good for executing synchronous and CPU-intensive tasks.
Java vs Python vs Node.js: The Difference
​ | Java | Python | Node.js |
Speed | Fastest | Fast | Faster |
Performance | High | High | Low |
Scalability | High | Medium | Highest |
Simplicity | Simple | very simple | Medium |
Community | Strong | Strong | Strong |
Library | Good | Good | Excellent |
Cross-functionality | High | High | High |
Cost | Paid | Free | Free |
Speed
As Java is compiled as bytecode and statically linked code the performance is always faster.
NodeJs speed is better than Python because of the V8 engine. The V8 engine interprets the javascript code to machine language and optimizes the solution to reduce load time. NodeJs programs run on a single thread. However, you can easily find multi-threaded libraries.
Performance
Java supports multithreading hence if an application does heavy parallel processing, it will be really a great choice.
Node JS supports event-driven programming and hence asynchronous programming.
Python always has great performance and it always has the advantage of being a simple language to learn.
Scalability
Node.js is quite scalable, owing to microservices, event-driven architecture, and non-blocking I/O. It allows the creation of microservices and modules. Whenever the solution expands, these microservices and modules resort to dynamic process runs and keep the performance and speed in check.
Java being garbage collected by the resource optimized JVM, it becomes a decent choice to scale.
Python is hard to scale as it’s dynamically typed it’s always slower. As the code goes the system also gets slower and the system gets too tangled.
Simplicity
Java is object-oriented programming and memory management is taken care of by the JVM hence its learning curve is small.
Python is a high-level language and its syntax is more intuitive. Hence the learning curve is even smaller than Java and that is definitely the factor used in most non-software industries like data science and others.
The learning curve of the NodeJs is simple too, but the inner workings of the run time environment like async programming, hook, and patterns are difficult to grasp.
Community
Both Java and Python have been around for quite a long time and have healthy communities.
NodeJs is a relatively new technology still looking at the adaptation and as its open-source, it has a sizable community.
Library
All three have a voluminous library to support various functions and they are well documented.
When working with NodeJs, you will find NPM (NodeJs Package Manager.) It is a free online repository that fuels and simplifies JavaScript development by storing NodeJs packages.
Cost
Python comes with lots of open-source libraries and frameworks that help to reduce the cost of python.
Whereas Java is now owned by Oracle and it’s licensed and to get the support we need to pay the license cost.
The cost involved for NodeJs using the NPM packages is cost-free, there will be a cost involved for the paid library for payment gateway and third-party integration.
Cross-Functional
All of the above work seamlessly across different environments. As Java is meant for code once and it will run everywhere hence it’s suitable for network application, parallel processing, and web application development. Python can easily run as far as the runtime remains the same, it’s suitable for web applications and data science applications. NodeJs works for multiple OS and devices hence it’s good for web applications and cloud-based IoT solutions.
The Tech Platform
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