Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Java vs Python - Which Programming Language beginners should learn in 2024?

Java and Python are two of the most popular and influential programming languages of the present time. Beginner programmers often get confused, one of the most frequently asked questions is should I learn Java or Python? Is Python is an excellent programming language to start with? Which programming language would you recommend for beginners to learn first etc.? Since I am a Java developer, my opinion is biased, I will always suggest you start with Java and then learn Python, but if you ask this question to a Python developer, you might get just the opposite answer. I have well documented my reasons as to Why Java is the best Programming language and Why a programmer should learn Java. One of the most important reasons you would see in that blog post is an active Java community, which will help you throughout your Java career.

You can ask some beginner stuff starting from how to set PATH and classpath to advanced material about debugging Java programs in Eclipse, no matter what kind of question is, there is always someone in the Java community, who is ready to answer and help you.

This is one of the reasons that StackOverflow is full of Java questions. By the way, Python is not a spring chicken anymore, it has fully grown and given stiff competition to mainstream languages like Java and C++.

When I first come across Python, I thought it's a scripting language, but that is an understatement. You can do object-oriented programming in Python as well. It's also used heavily in web development sites like Reddit are built using Python and machine learning, and data science make Python even more useful.

From a beginners point of view, I always suggest picking a language that is easier to learn, powerful to attract you, and have strong community support, now both Java and Python fits this bill, and until you do some excellent comparative analysis, you can not decide which language to learn from Java vs. Python.

Thankfully, we have an infographic, which highlights some vital differences between Python and Java, I am sure after taking a look at this Infographic, you will be able to decide which is the right programming language to start with.

If you already made up your mind to go with Java, then The Complete Java Masterclass course by Tim Buchalaka on Udemy is an excellent course to start with. It's not only the most up-to-date course and covers the latest Java features from recent releases but also the most comprehensive and well-structured course which makes learning way easy.




Python vs. Java - Infographic

Being two different programming languages, Java and Python can be useful tools for modern developers for developing applications.

Before learning any programming language, it is a must to know the difference between them.

It could be wrong to declare that Java can be less productive compared to Python due to numerous elements.

But, no matter whether you choose Java or Python, here are excellent resources to learn both Java and Python in 2024

You can join these Udemy courses to learn both Java and Python from scratch in 2024. Since I am a Java developer, I personally suggest you learn Java in 2024 as it is one of the most popular languages for backend development and Android app development.

Let’s go through this infographic to learn some differences:

Java vs Python? which programming language beginner should learn



From this Infographic, you can easily see that  Java is very verbose than Python. It takes 10 lines of code to read from a file in Java, while it only takes 2 lines of code in Python. This point goes towards Python because beginner programmer definitely likes to write less code.

The second point is about the static and dynamic type of variable, In my opinion, you need a strict programming language and compiler to detect silly mistakes made by beginners, In Java, you can not store an integer value in a String variable.

So on this point, my vote goes to Java. Speed, which is a crucial thing on enterprise-level application development, you can see that Java is faster than Python, but do remember that you need to compile and run Java programs, while Python doesn't need to be compiled.

Python shell can directly interpret python commands, which means easier for programmers. So now Python and Java are both 2 and 2.

This is an important reason to learn Python for beginners because it just makes it easy to try and learn, and if you choose to learn Python, then The Complete Python Bootcamp by Jose Portilla on Udemy is an excellent place to start with. It covers Python 3 from scratch.

Python vs Java - which is better to start learning Programming


Things have improved with the introduction of JShell in Java 9, but I still rank Python better in terms of quickly whipping up a script and running.

You can also see that hello world in Java takes more lines than hello world in python. The rest of the examples you can analyze by yourself, but all it comes that both Java and Python are equally capable, no one is lesser than others.

As a Java developer, I can say from my personal experience that you will not regret learning Java and choose it as a career; of course, you can learn Python anytime, and it's suitable for writing small utilities, but Java is Java.



Other Java and Python Articles you may like

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like this article, then please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback, then please drop a note.

P. S. - If you already know Java Programming then you can also learn Python as your second programming language to expand your skill. The same goes for Python developers, as learning Java can make you a better programmer and teach you how to work on a complex project. If you need resources, see these best Python courses to start with. 

48 comments :

Unknown said...

Primo
What about concvurrency in Python?
Concyrrencvy, the strong part od Java, one of the most important things in serious corporate programming.

Secundo
I can't understand why
public static void main(String[] args)
iż always set as prime example for code length in Java?
There is usually one main() method in project but person who doesn't know Javacould think that it is nessary to out main() method Evert time hi wants to write text to console.

Tertio
Java is owned by Oracle, then it iż obvious, that Google and other "community" do not lukę Java despite the real cobs and pros of Java and Python.

In my humblewd opinion comparing Java and Python is lukę comparing C and Perl and trying replace for ideolgy only with one to another.

Anonymous said...

Your IO comparision is seriously flawed...to read a file in JAVA one needs no longer than two lines of code as of JDK 1.7...you are writing code as one would do in 1.5...Update yourself mate

Eswar Vandanapu said...

Python code is not doing any automatic resource management. You woild code some thing like this:

with file('/path/to/file','r') as f:
print f.read()

This will make sure file is closed at the end of the with statement.

Unknown said...

Java is a poor language for beginning programmers. Not because python is easier or python programs contain fewer lines of code. Java forces you to program in one way and one way only, a particular form of object oriented programming. When I tell this to people their reaction is often "But object oriented programming is obviously superior to procedural programming!" The fact that they consider the only alternative to java oop to be cobol style procedural programming it's evidence they have been stuck in the java constraints way too long.

Ankit Jain said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
iskorn said...

I honestly cannot consider Python as a _programming_ language, at least a serious one. For me it is just a mess of ad hoc hacks w/o any noticeable consistency behind. In addition its libraries (well, those ones I've looked at) look like they have been created in a rush w/o any design and even taking into account common practice and standards. I do believe that it can be used for quick and dirty scripting but cannot imagine how any serious software can be created with Python. I think that it is a huge step back from Perl which has at least an elegant design. I've heard that PHP is even uglier, but can barely imagine how it can be.

Unknown said...

Nice Difference for python and Java
U will Provide a such a good thinks for us..
its Great stuff....!!!!

Indian Minerva said...

I would like to disagree about the speed too. But I would like to admit that my benchmarking has been confined to mere literal operations. for example I tried the below : [sum (2^i) where 0 <= i <= 63] and python has beaten java to dust. Surprised (and encouraged) by that, I tried other similar operations, and guess what?? Python is a clear winner.

N.B. I am a Java developer with 7.5 years of experience and had been introduced to Python only a month or two ago but I am liking Python.

Anonymous said...

So you have learnt Python using 2.x. Then comes 3.x and breaks many things. So you have to learn again. What a great language Python is!

Anonymous said...

After 10 years of C++, I've been doing almost exclusively python for 3 years, and I started to learn java today. On the performance side, python is actually way faster than most people think, because (i) cpu-expensive code is typically written in C (ii) objects don't get copied under the hood. Does java have introspection capabilities? That's one of the very strong advantages of python over C++.

Anonymous said...

java is java. lol

Anonymous said...

haha, java is a pretty bloated language, even if it has more features and abilities than python would have.

Anonymous said...

You can actually read an entire text file to a String in Java in one line:

String text = new Scanner( new File("poem.txt") ).useDelimiter("\\A").next();

Anonymous said...

python is easy compare to java...I was working on java 3yrs...now I am working on python....But for a large app java is better.....

Anonymous said...

I have used Python for nearly 9 months and I don't consider it as a serious programming language for the enterprise level applications. It is a nightmare to write large nested blocks of code, since there are no block separators like { } in Python. If one wrong space character could make the whole program logic wrong. It is surprising that Python does not have arithmetic operators like ++ or --. May be the authors of this language intended for only as a scripting language!

rajesh kumar said...

great difference between java and python

Anonymous said...

First, I'm a statistician, and the usual languages in my field are mainly SAS and R (and sometimes VBA). For many tasks related to my job, I prefer Python. I have also used Java in the past (versions 1.3 to 1.5), and tried many other languages. I use Python since around 2002.

To answer one post, a precision : Python has += (and also -= *= ...).

Regarding speed, Python is slow, when relying on "pure" Python features. If you use mostly an underlying C routine, of course it's different. On the other hand, Java has just-in-time compilation, so should be almost as fast as C, unless you rely too much on objects and automatic boxing (but it's quite frequent).

Java is much more verbose than Python. Regarding indentation by space, it's absolutely not a problem, and certainly not worse than indenting with curly brackets. Both are difficult to read if there are too many indentation levels, but it's a problem with the program (and the programmer), not with the language. A too long routine should often be proken into smaller pieces.

Python 3 breaking compatibility with Python 2 ? Sure, but the things that really change, change much less than Java 1.3 (or even 1.5) vs newer versions of Java. It's very easy to port from one version of Python to the other (and there is even an automatic tool for most of the trouble).

Python not a "real" programming language ? What a joke. It has pros and cons, as any other one, and it has proved to be a rather good one. That Python is a good language for your task or not, depends entirely on your task.

I have used both Python and Java quite intensively, and there are a few reasons I now use almost only Python :

- much easier to type : less verbose, no need to declare variables
- Python "philosophy" : often one way to write something, or at least one "good" way, not as in Perl or Ruby for, example
- good data types (list, hash, set), list comprehensions and generators are very usueful (and very easy syntax for generators)
- no trouble with silent integer overflow, there is no integer overflow at all
- very good library for all kind of OS support, plus zillions of other libraries for any need
- speed is not a concern : as design and coding take much longer than running the program in my case (file management, statistics, reporting), I prefer a better readability and easier coding as in Python
- very easy to write modules
- regarding comparison with Java, ability to program in non-OOP style is much appreciated !
- some functionnal programing features, mainly closures
- introspection and ability to produce code at runtime (exec/eval...)

Somes reasons I think Python is not perfect either :
- lack of goto or catch/throw constrcut as in Lisp (which is not the same as exception handling), or at least labeled break/continue. It's annoying in some situations, for example when you want to exit an inner loop. There are workarounds, but I still miss Lisp for this
- syntax for classes is awkward
- lack of a good compiler (pure Python is too slow, compared to Lisp, which is also a dynamic language)

Sure, there are situations where another language would be better (C, C++, why not Java), but there are many cases where Python simply shines.

Anonymous said...

IMHO Python is good for beginners. Java's better for other cases because its usually a bit faster than Python. There is one more reason why many programmer prefer Java since it has good library support, and it's the only native way to do Android.

Anonymous said...

then what the heck was java doing till 1.5 for file io?
dude .. the really power of python comes when everything is dynamic . and for static you can guess .. its kids play . the simple reason java is widely used coz it gained its popularity from sun labs . while guido von rossum was a simple student.

Anonymous said...

It has arithmetic operators like ++ :
In python it is += ,*= ....

Anonymous said...

Python is slower than java??

Anonymous said...

Python is far from perfect...

>>> tup = ('tup')
>>> type(tup)


>>> tup = ('tup',)
>>> type(tup)

Anonymous said...

" In Java you can not store integer value in a String variable ".
In Python either because Python is a strong typed dynamic language. The variables in Python are described by the value that has been assign to. The variable by itself has not any type. Try print(x) and you will get an error. So when you type:
st=100
and then
st='something'
the variable st is assign to int and then to String type.

Anonymous said...

Whenever I see lines such as:
public static int foo() {
I cringe.
No offence to Jave, but Python is my favourite by far. And there are no huge differences between Python 2.x and 3.x syntax-wise, the biggest problem is that many important libraries have not been rewritten yet.

Anonymous said...

python is easy to learn and its fun too...

Zashel said...

Python is slower than JAVA while you don't compile it.

Anonymous said...

Any day, I will choose Java over Python because of just one reason, Java is strongly typed language. A strongly typed languge will catch all your typos at compile time which will only be spotted at runtime in caes of weakly typed language like Python. Of course, you should use proper types instead of just String to represent anything e.g. number, floating point number, employee etc. A strongly typed languge encourage you to use Types to avail full benefit of compiler, then there is enum :)

Anonymous said...

hello world

Anonymous said...

python is python, lol

Anonymous said...

java is love

Robert MacHale said...

Java is an elegant language. And, Microsoft borrows from it in C#. Nobody is suggesting Python style is worth repeating in other languages. RDM

juzraai said...

You can do file reading in one line also in Java.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3402735/what-is-simplest-way-to-read-a-file-into-string

Anonymous said...

Java is Java - true
Python is Python - true
My vote for Java

Anonymous said...

Do not confuse dynamically typed and statically typed with weakly typed and strongly/strictly typed. Make no mistake, python is strongly typed.

Anonymous said...

Java Is Java...I have started learning Java..., I'm loving it..

Unknown said...

Java is great and Python is great but you compare the two language to Perl then Perl sucks, ugly, and unfashionable..

Unknown said...

This article is old. JavaScript is number 1 in popularity now (see Stack Overflow and Github). Rightfully so, since it is much faster and more expressive than Python.

Geo Sustainability said...

Yes, Python is a horrible language to learn first. You may able to do a lot in Python with very little in time investment, but the bad habits you will learn by figuring out how to code in a dynamic language will ultimately lead you into a just so-so programmer. You are better off learning how to program in Java or C#, and then move to languages like Python, Ruby, and then on to C when you need speed.

Trust me, bad habits are hard to break and you are better off learning a strict language before you dive into the Wild West.

strofi said...

Python is better for system administration tasks, primarily as the bash scripting substitute. It has much more clear syntax and does not require expensive JVM startup.

javin paul said...

@Unknown, indeed, many organization uses Python for automating stuff instead of writing bash scripts.

Anonymous said...

I think you should inform the stupid people in Google, the are using the inferior Python.

Anonymous said...

also if you have some resource hungry part of your program, you can write a modul in c for it.

Anonymous said...

imo writting large nested blocks of code is a not a good practice in any language.
also, i am not sure if you took your time to really learn python, it has very different philosophy in many areas. for example using equivalent of ++ (+= 1) is very rearly needed in python compared to c or java. it is flexible so it will allow you to write program like it was java, but it is not good.

Sharon said...

I would like to add that Python is apt to create a sophisticated system that could be integrated with the production.

am said...

I believe programmers can be more productive with python.Besides,productivity is not a measure for programming skills.Its all about our interest and knowledge.The only aim we should focus should be to encourage more skilled young programmers to lead the future.

For more info.: https://bit.ly/2CyIgGU

Aga Rengma said...

I am learning programming these days as a newbie. My only previous working knowledge and experience is in PHP (web development).

As a newbie, Python feels like learning English language. Java makes me feel like I am learning a programming language.

Did a little research and realised that almost all important softwares (that matters) are in Java while almost all python based stuffs are childish (that doesn't matter).

Akash said...

As an experienced java programmer, If I get opportunity to work in python should i grab it or not ??

Noceur said...

Funny how all the Python bashing have aged pretty fucking bad, especially calling the projects made with Python childish is something only a freshman would do.

Neither is a bad choice but for learning coding definitely start with Python. Furthermore Python have overtaken Java as the top language used within faang.

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