Which is stronger? Python or PHP

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.

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