Analytics Insight explains the differences between Python and Java for machine learning

Machine learning, Data Science, deep learning, and many other major and rising disruptive technologies need one or two programming languages to create products and services for the global tech market. Companies and start-ups have started recruiting employees who are from a technical background with sufficient knowledge of anyone or two programming languages such as Python, Java, R, C++, etc. for efficient coding. Strong coding skills are essential to deal with cutting-edge technologies. Aspiring machine learning engineers, machine learning architects, data scientists, and so on are highly interested to learn Python and Java as these two have the highest demand in this field. This article is a machine learning guide for beginners to explain the differences between Python and Java for a better understanding.

Python

Python is a high-level and one of the top programming languages in recent times for efficient coding. It is also known for its object-oriented and structured programming that is fully supported on any server to create web applications. Developers can build robust applications with the help of Python due to its English-like syntax. This feature helps them to read and understand the code easily, without much trouble. There are many employees who do not have a technical background and are just beginners but have to learn Python for professional careers— Python is very easy to pick up and learn in a short span of time. There is a need for fewer lines of code to perform than C++ or Java.

Python is popular in the community owing to its productive nature because it helps developers to focus more on solving complex real-life problems and less on the syntax of the coding language.  It directly executes the code line by line and detects potential errors before the final execution. The interpreted language automatically assigns certain types of real-time data during the execution. The most important characteristic of Python is that it is free to use and anyone can download the source code, modify, and distribute their own version of Python without having any prior training.

There is also a vast array of machine learning libraries for Python where developers can find multiple functions for different tasks without depending on any external library.

Java

Java is also a high-level, multi-platform, network-centric, and object-oriented programming language to have a few implementation dependencies from developers. It is used for internet-based applications as a simple and efficient coding language. Java is also an extremely portable and interpreted language like Python. The same applications will run identically on different hardware and operating systems without any hindrance. The source code is first compiled into a binary byte-code that runs on Java virtual machine.

Java is known as a dynamic programming language that is also easy to learn for beginners and can be written, compiled, debugged, and learned faster. Developers can create modular programs and reusable code.

Differences Between Python and Java

Recently, there is a bridge between the use of Python and Java due to a higher demand for Python in the tech-driven world.

• Python is known for its potential in experimentation, whereas Java is popular for production code
• In the case of code, Python has fewer lines of code while Java has longer lines for code
• Python consists of fewer number of frameworks, whereas Java shows a large number of frameworks for developers
• For beginners, the syntax of Python is easy to remember without any potential error owing to its similarities with human language while the syntax of Java is very complicated to understand and holds a chance of committing errors in lines
• Python is known as the only interpreted coding language, whereas Java is a combination of a compiled and interpreted coding language
• Python uses indentation to distinguish code into different blocks while Java uses second brackets to mention the beginning and end of each function and class
• Python provides more string related functions to the developers than Java
• Python is more preferred for scientific and numeric calculations, machine learning, AI, Data Science, and many more but Java is used for desktop GUI apps, especially web application services

That being said, it has been observed that the demand for Python is thriving in the global tech market and tech-savvy developers prefer to use this programming language over other ones. Python holds a promising future ahead while creating demand in multiple companies and start-ups. But, it is essential to learn both Python and Java after learning about the differences for a successful career path in the tech-driven future.