Different Projects have a variety of different needs to be fulfilled. Choosing a better technology is mainly depended on the preference of the developer, in which one he or she feels comfortable. It wouldn’t be relevant or practical to declare any one of them worse or useless. But I am here just differentiating between both Python and Node.js and leaving it on your hand to conclude and choose better after going through this article.
Node.js:
This is an open-source, cross-platform, server-side JavaScript runtime environment (Framework) built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, that executes JavaScript code outside a web browser. It was developed by Ryan Dahl in 2009. It allows developers to use JavaScript to write command-line tools and scalable network applications (server-side scripting—running scripts server-side) to produce dynamic web page content before the page is sent to the user’s web browser. It allows developers to create real-time web-applications that run across distributed systems like (Linux, Microsoft Windows, Os x). Its applications are written in JavaScript. It is also bedecked with useful JavaScript rich library, which simplifies the web-based development process very easy.
Node.js = JavaScript library + Runtime framework (Environment)
Following are the areas where it provides its best services to developers:
- Data Streaming Applications
- I/O bound Applications
- Data-Intensive Real-time Applications (DIRT)
- Single Page Applications
- JSON APIs based Applications
- Making a REST API server
- Network applications(like web servers, similar to PHP, Java, or ASP.NET)
Features of Node.js:
- Asynchronous and Event-Driven: All APIs of Node.js library are asynchronous, that is, non-blocking. It means a Node.js based server never waits for an API to return data. The server moves to the next API after calling it and a notification mechanism of Events of Node.js helps the server to get a response from the previous API call.
- Very Fast: It’s built on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript Engine, that’s why Node.js library is very fast in code execution.
- Single-Threaded 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 which create limited threads to handle requests.
- No Buffering: There is no buffering in Node.js as applications output the data is given in pieces.
Python:
Python is invented by Guido van Rossum, it’s an interpreted, Object-oriented high-level language with Dynamic semantics, Easy Syntax, Supports functional and structured programming also.
It’s highly recommended in:
- Scientific applications,
- Data science, Machine learning,
- Big data solutions,
- Creating web applications with Python Frameworks such as Django and Flask,
- Handling Database and its data.
Features of Python:
- Simplicity
- Portability
- Embedding Properties(can be easily integrated with C, C++, COM, ActiveX, CORBA, and Java)
- Interpreted(Python source-code compiled line-by-line, making debugging easier)
- Rich library support
- Oops programming
Key differences between Node.js Vs Python:
| S.no | Node.js | Python | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Node.js is the best choice for the asynchronous programming | Python is not the best choice for asynchronous programming. | |
| 2. | It’s best suited for small projects to enable functionality which needs less amount of scripting. | Python is the best choice if you’re developing larger projects. | |
| 3. | Node.js is best suited for memory-intensive activities. | Not recommended for memory-intensive activities. | |
| 4. | Node.js is a better option if your focus is exactly on web applications and website development. | But, Python is all-rounder can perform multiple tasks like- web applications, integration with back-end applications, numerical computations, machine learning, and network programming. | |
| 5. | Node.js is an ideal and vibrant platform available right now to deal with real-time web applications. | Python isn’t an ideal platform to deal with real-time web applications. | |
| 6. | The fastest speed and great performance are largely due to Node.js being based on Chrome’s V8 which is a very fast and powerful engine. | Python is slower than Node.js, As Node.js is based on fast and powerful Chrome’s V8 engine, Node. | |
| 7. | Node.js utilizes JavaScript interpreter. | Python using PyPy as Interpreter. | |
| 8. | In case of error handling and debugging Python beats Node.js. | Error handling in Python takes significantly very little time and debugging in python is also very easy compared to Node.js. |