The web development industry is constantly evolving. Year on year, developers introduce new languages and frameworks. Among a sea of frameworks and languages, Python and Golang have gained immense popularity in recent years. In this article, we will discuss Golang vs Python to know the features of both the languages and the differences between Go and Python.
The Go Programming Language
Go programming language was developed at Google in 2007. In 2009, it was launched as an open-source programming language. The Go programming language is called Golang because its website was initially hosted with the domain name golang.org.
Go is a compiled and procedural programming language with static typing. It is syntactically similar to C. However, it facilitates structural typing, better memory safety, and garbage collection.
Golang was developed to write programs related to networking and infrastructure. It was sought to be a replacement for programming languages like C++ and Java. Currently, Golang is used in a number of cloud-based and server-side applications. You can find Golang being used in domains like DevOps, microcontroller programming, games, site reliability automation, and robotics. You may also find use cases of Golang in data science and artificial intelligence. If we talk about industry use, applications like Kubernetes and Docker are developed using Golang. Before getting into a discussion about Golang vs Python, let us first discuss the features of Golang.
Features of Go Programming Language
Having a brief introduction to Golang, let us now discuss the features of the Go programming language.
- Go is a statically typed, procedural programming language with a powerful standard library.
- Go focuses on simplicity. It isn’t designed to have a lot of features like Python and Java programming languages. With its fundamental features, Golang focuses on providing reliability, maintainability, and readability to your code.
- Golang provides different tools like Goroutines and channels to facilitate the concurrent execution of programs. This helps you write highly scalable code that can be deployed on a multiprocessor architecture to make the best use of the infrastructure.
- With its focus on networking and infrastructure, Golang is a reliable programming language for developing backend applications for web development.
- Golang is parsable without a symbol table. Due to this, Golang has a very small compilation time.
The Python Programming Language
Python is a general-purpose programming language that supports both object-oriented and procedural programming. It was developed in 1991 and it has gained popularity since then due to its versatility. Python provides support for tasks from networking to Data science, and from web development to image processing. Python is also popular among beginners who are just starting with coding. This is due to the fact that Python’s English-like syntax helps them learn to code in an easy manner.
Talking about industry use, the Python programming language is used by companies like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google.
Features of Python Programming Language
To have a better understanding of the discussion on Golang vs Python, let us discuss some of the features of the Python programming language.
- Python is an interpreted language. It is easy to code and a beginner-friendly language.
- Python is open source. You can download the python software freely from the official website and use it on your machine.
- Along with procedural programming, Python also supports object-oriented programming. It helps you create a diverse array of applications in Python.
- With different frameworks like Tkinter, PyQt, and wxPython, you can create applications with a graphical user interface easily in Python.
- Python provides a rich collection of libraries that support a wide range of software domains like web development, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science, etc.
Golang vs Python: The Similarities Between Go and Python
Following are the similarities between Python and Go language.
- Both Python and Go are high-level languages. While writing code in Python or Go, you don’t need to know the system architecture.
- Python and Go, both support procedural programming.
- Both Python and Go support portability. It means that you can write a python or Go program on one machine and execute it on another machine without any error.
- Both Python and Go support easy-to-understand syntax.
Golang vs Python: The Differences Between Go and Python
Now that we have discussed the features of Go and Python, let us dive into the discussion of Golang vs Python and elaborate on the differences between Golang and Python.
- Python is an interpreted language whereas Golang is a compiled language.
- Python is dynamically typed. On the other hand, Golang has static typing.
- Python supports object-oriented programming. Go doesn’t. Therefore, Golang doesn’t support programming constructs like interfaces and inheritance.
- Python doesn’t provide built-in support for concurrency. It uses threads for concurrency. Go supports concurrency using Goroutines and channels.
- Python is a feature-rich language with tons of frameworks for accomplishing each task. Golang focuses on simplicity and doesn’t have many frameworks.
- Python finds its applications in machine learning and data science. On the other hand, Go is used in Back-end web applications and system applications.
- Golang doesn’t support Exceptions while python does. Golang uses errors in place of exceptions.
- With its concurrency features, Golang supports highly scalable applications. Python lacks behind Go in this area.
- Python uses indentation for defining code blocks. Golang uses curly braces just like C or C++.
Suggested Reading: C Sharp and Sequel Programming Languages
Golang vs Python: What Should You Choose?
Till now, you must have understood that Golang isn’t a generic language. It has been designed for specific tasks like networking and developing system applications. On the contrary, You can use Python for any task you want. Python has frameworks and libraries for almost every programming task.
If you are going to develop a mobile application, you shouldn’t choose Python. Python is less suitable for mobile commuting due to execution speed and memory requirement. Python also has a primitive database access layer. You need to use other frameworks to access databases.
Golang has poor dependency management. It also lacks behind in the number of features and libraries.
If you want your application to run faster,you should use Golang vs Python. Golang is simple and doesn’t require integration with various libraries and frameworks. Due to this, Golang performs better than Python even if it supports less features.
Conclusion
You might have observed that both Python and Golang provide value in their own way. It depends on your needs if you want to use Python or Golang.
- If you want to go for speed and scalability while compromising on features, Go for Golang.
- If you want to develop a feature-rich application easily using different frameworks, Go for Python.
- If you are a beginner, you can learn python as it is easy to learn. However, You should opt for Go if you want to have strong programming basics.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article. To learn more about programming languages, you can read this article on Java vs C++. You might also like this article on Python vs PHP for web development.
Stay tuned for more informative articles.
Happy Learning!
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