The
debate between PHP and Python with regards to the respective strength
of each as a stronger framework has been dong the rounds for quite some
time now. Based on flexibility, provisions for friendlier development,
options of support for varying number of functions arguments, licensing
policy with respect to open source or fully commercial, portability,
dynamic typing, community and the ability for freezing live objects
within a string representation, the comparisons are drawn.
Features Supporting PHP
A
number of features support the widely popular language of PHP.
Namespaces are nonexistent in this language. The functions at times have
prefixes to them in order to denote their source but often, they don’t
have. The functions in PHP are placed quite often into the classes in
order to simulate namespaces.
Being
an extremely casual language, where quite often Globals are used for
passing arguments and the use of global variables is discouraged since
those are language independent. The environment is that of a commonly
installed environment.
It
has a single type of arrays that double up as a list as well as a
dictionary. The dictionary keys are iterated according to their original
order. PHP offers the developers with excellent documentation
facilities along with a huge Community base along with a huge supportive
codebase that is available online.
Features Supporting Python
Contrary
to it, Python contains Namespaces and modules along with a small core.
The language has Indentation for marking out the block structure instead
of the curly braces that make the code look prettier. It has a concise,
clear as well as an orthogonal syntax with self documenting through
docstrings and pydoc. There are keyword arguments assigned to methods
and functions to provide easy support in case of default arguments.
It
has true object type of orientation along with ‘first class’ classes
and functions. These classes have been used extensively in standard
library. It has method chaining, multiple inheritance, object-oriented
system for file handling, ‘del’ statement for all data types, consistent
case sensitivity, threading, operator overloading along with iterators
and structured exception handling like that of PHP 5.
It
provides support for all the major GUI frameworks along with strong
internationalization along with UNICODE support. It is known for being a
mature, stable and upward-compatible language and it tends to lead into
many more scalable applications.
Contrary
to PHP, that consists of web development features which are built
directly into the core language, the capabilities of web development in
case of Python have been provided by various add-on modules.
The
primary CGI capabilities are provided by the ‘cgi’ module that comes in
the standard library of the same. There is even a wide array of various
third-party modules that are available with respect to Python; some of
which are complementary while others compete. These results in Python
providing the users with an even more flexible base for carrying out
projects related to web development.
However,
there are certain adverse effects with respect to this flexibility like
the choices and the entire range can be quite confusing.
PHP
is a lot easier to begin with as a web developer unless one is highly
experienced with working on Python. Moreover, support with respect to
PHP is generally more common in case of the shared-hosting companies as
compared to that for Python.
Furthermore,
PHP unlike Python is embedded in the web server, whereas web
applications for the latter have the option to be either embedded in the
web server or to be run in a separate process.
Speed of Execution
Neither of the language has largely an advantage over the other and each has different things to offer for different spheres.
Maintenance
With
respect to maintenance, Python is lot easier to maintain as compared to
PHP even if one has not used the first language for a considerable time
span. The scope access of Python is a better option.
Support/Community
Support
and Community is definitely better for PHP but of late, there has been a
change as large Python communities are helping out the users.
Python
is preferred to the other language for developing a scalable
application as it’s relatively easier here. Moreover, Google offers
Python with more supports as compared to PHP with the Google App Engine
that has the provision of free hosting for websites. You can get in
touch with a custom Python development company who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.
We provide Python development service. If you would like to hire Python developers for your development needs, please contact us Mindfire Solutions.
