Python or Julia?

Kinga

2020/12/28 10:36

Python

It is interpreted, open source and dynamic programming language with efficient high-level data structures. It supports object-oriented programming as well as procedural oriented programming. It was created by Guido Van Rossum in 1991.

Features of Python

Easy to learn and code

Python is a developer friendly language and it can be learned easily as compared to other programming language like C, C#, Java, etc.

Free and Open source

It is freely available to download at the official website. The source code is also available to the public, which can be downloaded, used or shared as well.

Object oriented Language

It supports object oriented language and the concepts of classes, object encapsulation etc.

Graphical User Interface(GUI) programming support

GUI can be made using Python module. PyQt5 is the most popular module for creating graphical apps with Python.

High-Level Multi-platform language

It is a high level language. You don't have to remember the system architecture and manage the memory while writing python program.

Extensible and Portable language

Python code can be written and compiled in other programming language such as C, C#, etc. It can also run on different platforms such as Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows, despite being written in any one of the platforms.

Interpreted language

Python code need not be compiled, thus making it easier to debug our code.

Large standard library

It has large standard library of rich set of modules, functions, regular expressions, unit testing, web browsers etc.

Dynamically typed language

We don't have to assign variable type as it is decided at run time.

Julia

Julia is an open-source, high-performance, high-level, and dynamically-typed programming language. It is widely used for statistical computing, data analytic, scientific research, data modeling, graphical representation and reporting.

It was developed by Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, Viral B. Shah and other contributors. It had it's stable release in 9 November 2020.

Features of Julia

Easy to learn with math friendly syntax.
Free and open-source.
It is compiled, not interpreted which makes it faster.
High-performance language similar to statically-typed languages.
Dynamically typed language.
It is highly extensible language
It is designed for parallel and distributed computing.
Quick and compact user-defined types as built-ins.
Inter-operability with other programming languages like C, Python, etc.
Lisp-like macros and other metaprogramming facilities.
Supports encoding via Unicode, UTF-8, etc.
Elegant and extensible conversions and promotions for numeric and other types.
It provides powerful shell-like capabilities for managing other processes in the system.
It gives the functionality of multiple dispatch.

Julia Vs Python

Performance

Julia has a faster execution time than Python whose language is interpreted.

Speed

Julia is faster than Python.

Libraries

Python has more set of libraries.

Tooling

Python has brilliant tool support and interface built by its community.

Versatility

Julia is versatile but Python has higher edge in complete versatility.

Ease of Use

Python is certainly more useful than Julia because of its resourcefulness.

Community

Python has larger community as compared to Julia since it has been for around for a longer duration whereas Julia is a new language.

Dynamically typed

Julia and Python are both dynamically typed languages which means developers don’t have to specify variables. However, with Julia, you can combine both dynamic typing and static typing.

Compiled and Interpreted

Julia is a compiled language, hence it shows problems such as recompiling the code most of times while starting up. Python is an interpreted language and doesn’t need compilation.

Conclusion

Both Python and Julia has their share of advantages. Julia may have come as a superior programming language in areas like code conversion, performance and speed but Python is older and it has massive and active community. Python also has more libraries and tool support and interface built by its community.