Python and Go, who is the 'king' of programming languages?

The speed of technology iteration is getting faster and faster, and this is especially evident in the update changes of programming languages. Not long ago, Python developer Anaconda released Py, which allows Python applications to run in the browser. In recent days, developers have adopted the same idea to make Go also run on the browser.

As we all know, each language has its own unique performance and cannot be replaced with each other. Both Python and Go are very popular languages ​​these days. Technically, Go is a procedural functional language built for speed, while Python is an object-oriented, imperative, functional, and procedural language. Go supports concurrency, i.e. an algorithm is able to run its steps out of order, which Python does not.

As can be seen from the latest issue of the TIOBE programming language rankings, Python still occupies the top position steadily, and Go ranks 14th.

TIOBE May Programming Language Ranking

"Python is the most powerful, and Go is the fastest" should be the voice of most programmers. In fact, although Python and Go have their own advantages, Python has the upper hand in terms of popularity. Why is Go language less popular than Python?

PART 01

Python was born earlier

Go is made for needs

If you want to explore the problem of popularity, you can see the clues from the beginning of the language.

Python appeared in 1991. It has a large number of users, so it has a large number of complete and detailed documents. Almost all libraries have official documentation, and there are a large number of open source projects. Using Python, you can reuse previous experience and document code. Therefore, Python can be well integrated into enterprise applications.

Go was developed by Google in 2009. It is mainly used to solve the overloaded and over-designed languages ​​of other programming languages. Although it has high performance and speed, it has abandoned some functions, such as it does not have a powerful library. , also does not support inheritance, does not support object-oriented programming, which makes it very suitable for lightweight thread implementation.

It should be noted that Python was produced earlier, and more people used it, so more documentation and project codes were circulated, which in turn prompted more and more people to use it, forming a positive cycle. Although Go has many advantages, it is not suitable for heavyweight projects, and it does not have a large number of libraries and cannot be used for object-oriented programming, which basically isolates the possibility of making it popular. Next, let's take a look at the difference between the two.

PART 02

in motion

Large quantity, fast PK speed

1. Syntax: Python's syntax uses indentation to indicate blocks of code, and Go's language is based on opening and closing parentheses.

2. Paradigm: Python is a multi-paradigm, imperative and functional programming language based on object-oriented programming. It always insists that if a language behaves a certain way in some contexts, it should ideally behave similarly in all contexts. But it is not a pure OOP language, it does not support strong encapsulation. Go is a procedural programming language based on the concurrent programming paradigm that bears a superficial similarity to C, in fact, Go is more like an updated version of C.

3. Concurrency: Go has a built-in concurrency mechanism, while Python does not provide a built-in concurrency mechanism.

4. Typed: Python is a dynamically typed language whereas Go is a statically typed language, which actually helps to catch errors at compile time, which can further reduce critical errors later in production.

5. Usage: Python is more used in web applications and it is great for solving data science problems. Go revolves more around systems programming, i.e. Go is more of a systems language.

6. Security: Python is a strongly typed language, it is compiled, thus adding a layer of security. Go has a type assigned to each variable, therefore, it provides safety. However, if any errors occur, the user needs to run the entire code by himself.

7. Manage memory: Go allows programmers to manage memory to a large extent. While memory management in Python is fully automated and managed by the PythonVM, it does not allow programmers to take responsibility for memory management.

8. Libraries: Compared to Go, Python provides a much larger number of libraries.

9. Speed: Go is much faster than Python.

PART 03

The Cheats of the Popularity of Programming Languages

**Through comparison, it is not difficult to find that both languages ​​have their own advantages and disadvantages. The popularity of a language needs to have enough advantages, and the disadvantages are not fatal enough.

1. Python: Powerful and versatile

(1) The syntax is simple

Compared with traditional C/C++, C# and other languages, Python has less strict requirements on code format. This relaxation makes users more comfortable when writing code without spending too much energy on minutiae.

Python is a programming language that represents minimalism. Reading a piece of Python code with beautiful layout is like reading an English paragraph, which is very close to human language, so people often say that Python is a programming language with pseudo-code characteristics. Pseudocode must be clearly structured, simple, readable, and similar to natural language.

(2) Open source and free

It is mainly reflected in two aspects: one is that the code written by programmers using Python is open source; the other is that the Python interpreter and modules are open source. The good thing about open source is that there is always a small group of people who, either not for fame or fortune, or for some purpose, will continue to strengthen and improve Python.

(3) Cross-platform

Python is essentially written in C, and wherever there is a C compiler there is a Python interpreter. For C, which has been running around the world for decades, it already has a large number of suitable platforms. As an interpreted language, Python is cross-platform and more portable.

(4) Powerful functions (many modules)

There are many modules in Python, which basically implement all common functions, from simple string processing to complex 3D graphics drawing, which can be easily completed with the help of Python modules.

The Python community is developing well. In addition to the core modules officially provided by Python, many third-party organizations have also participated in the development of modules, including software giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Even for some niche functions, Python often has corresponding open source modules, and there may even be more than one module.

(5) Wide range of uses

Python is suitable for website, desktop application development, automated scripts, complex computing systems, scientific computing, Internet of Things, game design, machine learning, natural language processing and many other aspects. It is designed to improve the productivity of programmers rather than the code they write. Because the Python program code is simple, compared with other programming languages, the later program maintenance is easier and more comfortable. From a business point of view, the required cost is reduced and the programmer's efficiency is increased.

"Life is too short, I use Python", this is a very popular mantra at the moment. But have you ever thought that other languages ​​are really not fragrant? Go also has its own advantages over Python.

2. Go: "The world's martial arts, only fast is not broken"

(1) Simple deployment

Go compilation generates a static executable with no external dependencies except glibc. This makes deployment extremely convenient: only a basic system and necessary management and monitoring tools are needed on the target machine, and there is no need to worry about the dependencies of various packages and libraries required by the application, which greatly reduces the maintenance burden. This is a huge difference from Python. Due to historical reasons, Python's deployment tool ecology is quite confusing, such as different applications of setuptools, istutils, ip, and buildout, as well as compatibility issues. The official PyPI source often fails, and a private image needs to be built, and it takes a lot of time and effort to maintain this image.

(2) Good language design

From an academic point of view, the Go language is actually very mediocre and does not support many advanced language features; but from an engineering point of view, the design of Go is very good: the specification is simple and flexible enough that programmers with other language foundations can Get started quickly. More importantly, Go comes with a complete tool chain, which greatly improves the consistency of team collaboration. For example, Gofmt automatically typeset Go code, which largely eliminates the problem of inconsistent code typesetting styles written by different people. Configure the editor to automatically run Gofmt when editing the archive, so that you can place it wherever you want when writing the code, and it will automatically become the correct typesetting code when you save it. There are also very useful tools like Gofix, Govet, etc.

(3) Faster performance and concurrency

Between Go and Python, it's a definite fact that Go executes a lot faster. This is because Go is more resource efficient compared to Python. Python uses resource-hungry threads, while Go uses independent Goroutines, which helps save resources like CPU and memory. This resource efficiency not only helps improve performance, but also provides cost-effectiveness.

(4) Scalability

Go has many built-in features to handle multiple concurrent web requests, which in turn makes it an efficient language for compiling programs. When the language is able to handle multiple concurrent requests, it is automatically also highly scalable. As a business grows, the programs used will need to do many things at the same time. So with Go's support for backend programs, any growing business will be better able to handle scalability issues.

In general, Go is more about solving the pain points of C or C++ programmers when writing high-concurrency programs. In terms of grammatical features, Go is mainly a niche language designed to serve high-concurrency background server programs, and it is impossible to become a popular language. High concurrency and high development efficiency are like having both.

PART 04

how to choose?

Both Go and Python are easy to use and learn. Go is really fast, and Python has a ton of community support. Currently, in the development of Go, Go is mainly used for server-side applications. Python is the language of choice for data scientists and will likely be for a long time.

Judging from the usage of R&D personnel, Python is used to compile more for intelligent analysis, and Go is used for some basic-level calling capabilities.

From a scalability perspective, Go was created with scalability in mind. Its built-in concurrency allows multiple tasks to be processed simultaneously. Python also uses concurrency, but not built-in, it achieves parallelism through threads. This means that if you plan to work with large datasets, Go should be a better choice.

From a performance perspective, Python is not a memory/CPU friendly language, but it has a large number of libraries that can perform basic development tasks efficiently. Go has built-in features and is more suitable for microservice software architecture.

From an application point of view, Python is suitable for artificial intelligence, data analysis, deep learning and web development tasks, while Go is suitable for system programming, and developers who perform cloud computing and cluster computing applications prefer to use Go.

From a community and library standpoint, Python's history gives it an advantage, with a large library of libraries and a large support community. And the Go language is still growing, there are not as many libraries and community support. But the rate of growth and adoption of the Go language is phenomenal, expanding every day.

From an execution perspective, if speed is king, Go is way ahead.

Taking the above into consideration, the specific use case will be the deciding factor in which language to adopt. If your development team wants to create microservices, Go is a more logical choice because it is fast, easy to program, and scalable. And Python is more suitable for AI, ML and data analysis tasks. When choosing a programming language, developers should consider the nature and size of the development project, as well as the required skill set.

However, when it comes to choosing a language, don’t be too confused. Because both languages, Go and Python, continue to evolve, expand, and grow. This means that no matter which language is chosen, developers will see more features and improvements in these languages ​​in the future. Let's wait and see!

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