NodeJS vs Python :
Which One Is Better
September 16, 2018 by Gulsanober Saba
Hey programming geeks, here is an awesome and marvelous
post of NodeJS vs Python. In this post we will discuss about
what is NodeJS and Python, their merits/demerits, why we use
them, their comparison and many more.
As there are lots of programming languages and their
demand is growing rapidly so in this way we face lots of
problems choosing them. All the languages have its own
merits and demerits so the only criteria for choosing them is
that what is your project’s requirements. Once you
discovered your project’s requirements, only then you can
choose right option for your projects.
Here we will discuss about only two languages NodeJS and
Python. We will try to find the answer of most obvious
questions – Which is better and why? Is there any
similarities between them or not? where can we use
them? And What are the major differences between
them. So let’s begin without any [Link] NodeJS vs Python
tutorial might be lengthy but i am pretty sure you will find it
beneficial and get lots of information from it, so please keep
a little bit patience with this tutorial.
NodeJS vs Python Tutorial :
Let’s The War Begin
First of all we will discuss about NodeJS, then Python and then
compare both of them.
What Is NodeJS ?
Overview
NodeJS is an open source runtime environment
for server side and networking applications.
It is not a programming language, it is an
environment allowing JavaScript code to run on the
server side and not in a browser.
It uses Google JavaScript V8 engine to run the code.
NodeJS provides an event-driven architecture
and Non-blocking I/O that is optimized and
scalable.
It is a cross platform environment and can run on
OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and
multiple operating systems.
NodeJS Architecture
As we seen earlier NodeJS is a run time environment for
executing javascript codes. But what is the run time
environment really. Let’s see it –
Before NodeJS we use javascript only to build applications
runs inside our browser. So every browser there what we
called is javascript(JS) engine that takes javascript code and
convert it to code that a computer can understand.
For example
Internet Explorer uses Chakra, Firefox uses
SpiderMonkey and chrome uses v8. And because of this
varieties of engine that some time javascript code behave
differently on one browser or another.
Now a browser provide a runtime environment for javascript
code. For example you probably know in browsers we have
the windows or a document
object([Link](”);) . These objects allow us
to work with the environment in which the code is
[Link] after 2009 only way to execute javascript code
was inside our browser. In 2009 Rahn Dahl creator of
NodeJS came up with the brilliant idea. He thought it will be
great to execute javascript outside the browser. So he
took Google v8 Engine which is the fastest javascript and
embedded it inside a C++ program and called that program
Node. so similar to a browser Node is runtime environment
with javascript code.
It contains a javascript engine that can execute javascript
code but it also has certain objects that provide an
environment for a javascript code. These objects are different
from the different environment objects that we have in
browser. For example if we don’t
have [Link](”); instead we have
other objects that give us more interesting capabilities such
as we can read the file system([Link]()), listen for
requests([Link]()) and so on. We can do stuffs
like that inside a browser.
So in essence NodeJS is a program that include a v8
javascript engine plus some additional module that have
capabilities not available inside browsers. We can work with
the file system or the network or so on.
Features Of NodeJS
Now we will discuss features of NodeJS. NodeJS has many
features which are listed below with a detailed explanation –
Asynchronous and Event-driven – In a
asynchronous, when request is made to server,
server continues to process other requests instead
of waiting for the current request. When request
processing completes, the response is sent to the
caller using callback mechanism.
Very Fast – As NodeJS is built on Google chrome’s
VB javascript engine so it’s library is very fast in
code execution.
Single Threaded but Highly Scalable
– NodeJS follows single thread mechanism as we
know with event looping. Event mechanism helps
the server to respond in a non-blocking way and
makes the server highly scalable as opposed to
traditional servers.
No Buffering –NodeJS cuts down the overall
processing time while uploading video or audio files.
[Link] applications never buffer any data. These
applications simply output the data in chunks.
Reasons To Use NodeJS
Now we will discuss why should we use NodeJS? So there is
reasons listed below –
Cross Platform –NodeJS is a truly cross platform
that means you can run your NodeJS web servers
on Linux, Mac or Windows. The inability to do this
can be a real ball buster.
One Of The Most Active Development
Communities – NodeJS has quickly risen as one of
the most popular and motivated development
communities around. It’s still considered a very
viable alternative to Python, Ruby, C# and Java.
NodeJS is not a Bloated Framework – NodeJS
does not come with the bell and whistles of some
full stack frameworks out there. In facts, it’s not
even a framework at all. If you need authentication,
templates, database access you will be writing all
that stuffs yourself. Basically NodeJS can be as slim
as you need it to be.
The Future is Lean – The future of web
development resides with keeping your server as
slim as possible. Basically your modern day server
should be delivering JSON data and NodeJS does it
well.
Used By Many Modern Day Companies – Lots of
companies are using NodeJS. Their websites are
completely created with NodeJS. Some of them are
– LinkedIn, Wal-Mart, PayPal, Uber, Netflix etc.
It’s Really Fast – Non-Blocking I/O means it can do
what you need a server to do very well. It take
requests and never block itself from receiving more
requests while fulfilling it’s queue.
NodeJS Success Stories
Now we will see success stories of NodeJS. NodeJS is very
popular and so it is adopting by various companies. Some
well-known companies that are made with NodeJS are listed
below.
PayPal
It is an online payment company.
It created two teams one is java team and another
one is javascript team to develop their applications
simultaneously.
What they found out that the javascript team build
the product both the faster and more efficiently.
[Link]
This is an application hosting website which use
NodeJS for building quality applications, deploying
new features , writing units and integration testing
easily.
Linkedin
It is a social media website.
When it went to rebuild their mobile applications,
they used NodeJS for their mobile application server
which acts as a REST endpoint for mobile
applications.
ebay
It is an e-commerce website.
They have two primary requirement- the first is to
make application as real time as possible.
And the second was to orchestrate a huge numbers
of eBay specific services.
Netflix
It is a online TV-series and video streaming website.
It used javascript and NodeJS to transform their
website into a single page application.
Uber
It is a cab service.
It has built its massive driver/rider matching system
on NodeJS distributed web architecture.
NodeJS Job Trends
Now let us move forward and look at the job trends of
NodeJS. So take a look on graph.
This graph shows present increase in job posting per year of
NodeJS. So as you can see the rising curve, by this curve you
can easily figure out that, if you are expecting a career in
server side web development NodeJS is a technology you
should target and start working with.
Until now we have seen about NodeJS but now we will discuss
about Python. So let’s move forward and grab the information
of Python.
What Is Python ?
Overview
Python was created by Guido Rossum in 1989 and is
very easy to learn.
It is an interpreted, object-oriented, high-level
programming language with dynamic semantics.
Features of python
Simple and easy to learn- The reason behind
python is simple and easy to learn is that it
resembles english language a lots and we check out
other programming languages compare to them it is
quite easy to read and write program in python.
Free and Open Source- It
follows FLOSS(Free/Libre and Open Source
Software) philosophy. It means one can freely
distribute copies of this software, read it’s source
code, modify it etc.
High-Level Language- When we talk about high
level languages it basically means that you can
write your code directly using english and python
will intern convert into the low-level machine
[Link] we talk about low-level languages it
basically refers to the assembly level language. One
does not need to bother about the low-level details
like memory locations etc while writing python
script.
Portable- If we talk about portability of python
then Python is supported by most of platforms
present in the industry today. It could be
Linex,Windows,Macintosh, Solaris, OS/2, Amiga,
BeOS, Windows CE, etc.
Support Different Programming
Paradigm- Python supports procedure-oriented
programming as well as object-oriented
programming.
Extensible- Python code can invoke C and C++
libraries, can be called from and C++ program, can
integrate with java and .NET components.
Also check-Best Python Frameworks To Learn In 2018
Reasons To Use Python
As we know now python is a most popular programming
language. You can think why this is so much used? So the
answer is listed below-
Data Science – It is well suited for data
manipulation and [Link] also deals with
tabular, matrix as well as statistical data.
Artificial Intelligence – In Python, almost every
idea can be quickly validated through 20-30 lines of
code (same for JS with libs). Therefore, it is a pretty
useful language for the sake of AI.
Big Data – Consequently in the current era of big
data, python is getting more popularity due to
its easy-to-use features which supports big data
processing and analytic process. Python has very
rich modules for big data.
Game Development – A major advantage of
using Python for game development is that the
language is very easy to learn. Game
development in python is a pretty easier task than
doing the same in another [Link] can make
2D as well as 3D games.
Computer Vision – So the python is one of the
important language for computer vision. We can do
many interesting things such as face detection,
color detection etc using python.
Browser Automation- By using python you can
post status in facebook and other social media. You
can directly login with your social media account in
any websites.
GUI Development – Simple syntax, modular
architecture, rich text processing tools and the
ability to work on multiple operating systems that
makes python a desirable choice for developing
desktop-based applications.
Python Success Stories
here are 8 companies that make use of python in different
domains.
YouTube
It is the one of most popular video sharing service
present today.
youtube is largely written in python.
So there python is used as scripting language as
well as programming language.
Google
It uses python to improve its web search system.
So python there help to get better search result as
such.
NASA
NASA, Los Alamos, Fermilab, JPL and others use
python scientific programming tasks.
NSA
It is the National Security Academy of US.
It uses python for cryptography and intelligence
analysis.
Raspberry Pi
It is a single board computer promotes python as its
educational language.
BitTorrent
It is a peer-to-peer file sharing system began its life
as a python program.
Dropbox
Dropbox storage service codes both its server and
desktop client software primarily in python.
Netflix
Netflix and Yelp have both documented the role of
python in their software infrastructure.
NodeJS vs Python – A
Detailed Comparison
When you think about backend development, Python and
[Link] are the first things that come to your mind. Python is
a programming language while NodeJS is an environment
that allows JavaScript code to run on the server side and not
in a browser. It is based on Chrome’s V8 Engine, which runs
on Google Chrome. So now we will see NodeJS vs Python in
tabular format.
Topics Python NodeJS
Definition It is a programming It is an environment tha
language. allows JavaScript code to
run on the server side
and not in a browser.
It does not support
It supports asynchronou
asynchronous
[Link]
Scalability programming by default,
feature guarantees
and but it supports different
smooth [Link]
Concurrency features with which
scalability within simple
asynchronous processing
web apps
can be easily achieved.
Learning python is easier
NodeJS is not a languag
because of their simple
it is an environment for
syntax and more compact
Learning running javascript codes
code. Python requires
Curve so dealing with NodeJS
fewer lines of code than
you should have prior
[Link] to reach the same
knowledge of javascript
result.
It is significantly faster a
It is not so much faster as it is based on Chrome V
Performance
compare to NodeJS. engine that is a very fas
and powerful engine.
Exception Handling in
Error Python is easier and takes Not so good as compare
Handling less time to debug and fix to python.
errors.
First Released It was first released in
It was first released in 2009.
1991.
It is used in Real Time data
It is used in maintenanc
processing. python
Real Time and handling of large
provides PyRealtime
Usage volumes of customer
package for developing
data.
real time applications.
It is mainly used in web
It is used as server side
Usage programming, desktop
scripting language.
applications, gaming etc.
Conclusion
The aim of this post was not to prove that python is better
than NodeJS or vice-versa. Our main aim was only that to
differentiate between them. We tried to show which language
is suitable for a particular problem. Both NodeJS and python
have their own capabilities and areas of [Link]
NodeJS and Python have rightfully earned their place in the
software development world. The choice of the main
technology for a project depends on multiple factors –
application type, industry sector, performance requirements,
developers experience, and so on. Hence, next time if you
have to choose the right language for your project then
choose it smartly.
So guys this was all about NodeJS vs Python tutorial.I hope
you all will be satisfied with this post and have got a lot of
informations about NodeJS and python. So friends if you have
any doubt regarding this post then just comment, i will try to
solve your issues. And if you like this post then share as
much as possible with your friends on various social media
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