Top 8 Advantages of Python Programming Language
In this tutorial, we will learn about advantages and disadvantages of learning Python programming language over other programming languages.
Python is a high-level, general-purpose, object-oriented, interactive, and interpreted programming language. A developer, Guido van Rossum, developed it. He released the first version of Python in 1991.
Python is a one of the most powerful and booming programming language in the world of programming. It is relatively easy to learn. It uses English keywords, concise code, and simple syntax. Therefore, Python code is clear to read and write. We can easily write a small program with Python.
But, Python also provides a lot of readymade tools for current hot technologies like data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, and for making commercial applications as compared to other languages.
If you are a beginner and want to learn a programming language, then Python may be a splendid choice for you. It is simplex to understand and anyone can use who is ready to get started with coding.
This tutorial is going to explain some advantages, as well as some disadvantages, of learning Python over other programming languages such as Java, C, C++.
Benefits of Learning Python Programming Language
Python is one of the best programming languages you can select to use. Beginners love to write the codes in Python because of being simple syntax.
If you are professional, or expert, as well even without experienced, they enjoy plenty to write programs using Python. There are the following advantages of learning Python that are as follows:
- Simple to read, understand, and use
- Interpreted language
- Extensive library
- Free and open source
- Dynamically typed
- Portability
- Broad supportive community
- Component integration
Let’s understand each benefit of Python in more details.
1. Simple to Read, Understand, and Use
For newcomers, Python is simple to read and understand. It’s a highly developed programming language that uses English keywords, concise codes, and simple syntax. Therefore, python code is easier to read and understand.
Many people recommend Python to beginners. This is because they know they write fewer lines of code to perform the same task as compared to other major languages like C/C++ and Java.
Besides it, there are none in the world of programming that are easy to use as Python. In other languages, you may notice that there are lots of brackets and even words in the program that you won’t even recognize. It is enough to scare away someone who is new in the world of programming at all because all the words look a bit intimidating.
Python is slightly different because it uses indentations that makes an easier to read code. Instead of words that you can’t recognize and understand, it uses English.
Python uses minimum special characters so that you can look at the page of code nicely and not feel like now it is difficult to understand and use.
Python also provides the easiest programming tools we can use. It offers plenty of comments for clarification if a program is too confusing for you. Overall, it is one of the best programming languages to get ahead of or even to learn about programming.
2. Interpreted Language
One of the primary advantage of Python is an interpreted language. It implies that Python interpreter interprets the code line by line. Let’s understand it with a simple example.
Suppose you have written ten lines of code in a program but there is an error in the fifth line. In this case, the interpreter will result till the fourth line and at a fifth line of code, it will show an error with result.
After that, the interpreter will stop the execution of the program. This is one feature that makes it easy to use. Python only displays one error, even if the program has more than one error. It makes debugging easier for programmers.
3. Extensive Library
Python has a huge number of fundamental standard library modules in the tech world. It has a wide range of modules to perform tasks.
Therefore, we don’t have to depend on the external libraries to perform different tasks. The presence of these modules also helps in reducing the code length to be written by the programmer. Some examples of fundamental Python library modules are as follows:
- Built-in- Functions and Exceptions
- Operating System interface module
- Type Support module
- Language Support module
- String module
- File input module
- Gzip module
- Network module
- Machine learning
- Socket module
- Data science, etc.
4. Free and Open-Source
Python is free because of coming under the OSI approved open-source license. We can install it absolutely free on our computer and never need to pay a penny.
But Python’s license permits us to do much more than that. You can download the source code directly from internet, modify it and even redistribute your version of Python if you want. To be a free and open-source like this, Python is so popular and successful.
5. Dynamically Typed
Like JavaScript, PHP, Perl, Python is an also well-known, dynamically typed programming language. In the dynamic type model, types are determined automatically at runtime.
You do not need to worry about declaring variables and their data types at the time of coding. Variables declared in the Python program are not bound to any particular data type. Consider the following example below.
>>> a = 'Apple'
>>> print(a)
Output: Apple
>>> a = 20.5
>>> print(a)
Output: 20.5
When we run Python program, it automatically determines the data type of a variable based on the value assigned to it. This is called dynamic typing. We can check the data type of a variable using the built-in function named type.
Some examples of statically typed programming language are:
- C
- C++
- Java
- Rust
- Go
- Scala
6. Portability
In other programming languages like C/C++, we need to change our code to run the program on different platforms. But this is not such with Python.
Python programming language is designed for portability. It takes care of the operating system (OS). We need to write the code only once and can run unchanged on all operating systems such as Linux, Mac, Windows, and others.
Only we need to set paths. Hence, Python programs are platform independent.
7. Supportive Community
As Python is so popular, the supportive community for Python is pretty big that can assist programmers of all experience levels, from beginners to specialists. The standard community of Python has helped it grow quickly as compared to other languages.
Python programming language comes up with many guides, highly understandable documentation, and instructional videos to help developers for learning the language quicker and more effectively.
In addition to it, you can also visit, both online and offline, to ask questions or to learn more about the program.
So, if you are interested in getting started with coding, Python is one of the best choice you can make. You can get started on easily it. Since it will work on several platforms, it is sure to work on your personal computer.
8. Component Integration
Python is a “Glue” programming language. This means that we can integrate Python with other languages such as C, C++, and Java. We can invoke C, C++ libraries and Java components easily.
We can also communicate with frameworks such as COM, .NET, and interact over networks with interfaces like SOAP, CORBA, XML-RPC.
Disadvantages of Python Programming Language
As there are a lot of reasons to love Python, it is important to realize that there are a few disadvantages or drawbacks that you should watch out for. These disadvantages are as:
1. Slow Execution Speed
As we have discussed above that Python is an interpreted language and dynamically typed language. The line-by-line execution of code often makes to slow execution speed.
Interpreted language is slower than compared to other compiled languages like Java. This is because it has to do the extra work while executing the code.
So, Python may not always be the best option if you are looking to work on a project that needs a lot of speed.
However, the speed of Python is rarely a problem today. We can speed up the Python speed by running application using PyPy interpreter (https://pypy.org/). PyPy implements a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler that improves the speed up to 98%.
2. Memory Consumption
Python is not memory efficient. It consumes a large amount of memory due to the flexibility of the data types. If you are building an application and prefer memory optimization, Python is not a good choice for memory optimization tasks.
3. Weak in Mobile Computing
Python is not a very good programming language for building mobile applications. It is generally used in server-side programming, not on the client-side or for mobile computing. There are the following reasons behind it.
- Python is not memory efficient.
- It has a slow processing power as compared to other programming languages.
4. Database Access
Writing programs in Python is a very easy and stress-free. But while interacting with database, it provides some limitation with database access.
The Python’s database access layer is found to be bit primitive and underdeveloped as compared to the popular technologies like JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) and ODBC (Open Database Connectivity).
However, the user rarely uses Python in vast enterprises that need smooth interaction of complex legacy data.
5. Runtime Errors
Since Python is dynamically typed language, errors that only show up at runtime. Due to which, it requires more testing.
Advantages of Python over Other Languages like Java
There are several advantages of learning Python as compared to other programming languages like Java. They are as follows:
- Python is a very easy to learn as compared to Java or C++/C.
- It is easy to write, easy to read and easy to understand than Java or C.
- Python is a little more general than other languages like Java because with Python, we can develop everything such as web applications, graphics, desktop application, quick scripts, etc.
- It supports both object-oriented programming and procedure-oriented programming.
- Python’s syntax is much simple as compared to other programming like Java.
- Since Python is dynamically typed language, we do not need to declare data type of variable as compared to Java. Java is a statically typed programming language.
In this tutorial, we have familiarized you with several advantages/benefits of learning Python as compared to other languages like Java/C/C++. I hope that you will have understood both advantages and disadvantages of learning Python programming language.
Thanks for reading!!!
