Every year there are new advancements in technology, and the demands in the market change because of which a certain programming language might become more suitable for a project than others. Some even suffer extinction or get endangered, while others flourish in the frameworks of top industries. In the recent past, there have been two programming languages that have gained quite the popularity because of their distinct nature and advantages. These are Swift and Python. This article provides a comparative analysis of Swift Vs Python.
What is Swift?
Swift is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, functional, object-oriented, block-structured, and imperative language first launched at the WWDC conference in 2014. A lot of research on the then-popular programming languages like Python, C#, Ruby, etc. was done in its creation and the latest approach to safety and software designs by Apple were successfully used in it. It is an entirely new, fast, modern, and interactive programming language that was specially created by Chris Lattner to work on iOS, iOS X, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS applications. The best thing about swift is that it can work on all devices and also makes the connection of one design with another easier because they both support the same language. As a result, it quickly became one of the top 5 programming languages, was mostly used by the Apple developer community, and effectively replaced the then most popular programming language – Objective C.
Advantages of Swift
- It’s easy to read and maintain Swift because the program codes are English-based. Swift has acquired syntaxes from many programming languages to make it more expressive.
- Swift is a very concise programming language because it doesn’t have a verbose code. A concise syntax helps developers to increase the development and testing rate of a program.
- Swift is scalable because it has plenty of features.
- Swift provides safety and improves the overall performance. It is very useful in handling bugs and increasing the speed and performance of an application.
- Swift has an Automatic Memory Management feature that prevents memory leaks and helps to optimize the performance of the application using Automatic Reference Counting.
- Swift provides cross-device support and works on a wide variety of Apple platforms.
Disadvantages of Swift
- It has a few compatibility issues with the latest versions of Apple devices. Plus, switching to a newer version of Swift is expensive.
- Its earlier versions have speed issues.
- There are very few experienced Swift developers since it’s a new programming language.
- Developers face delays in uploading applications that have been coded in Swift, to App Store.
What is Python?
Python is a widely-used general-purpose, high-level programming language that was created in 1991 by Guido van Rossum, a Dutch programmer, and was later developed by the Python Software Foundation. Its main focus was code readability with a concise syntax. A concise syntax increases the speed of workflow and efficiently integrates systems. Python was the fastest-growing programming language according to a 2017 survey by Stack Overflow. Therefore, many companies providing python development services that started around that time prominently used Python as their core programming language. Some of those companies are very popular today like Quora, Netflix, Spotify, Instagram, etc. Python is used for various purposes, chief among them being data analysis, web development, machine learning, and DevOps. Thus, it’s a developer-friendly language.
Advantages of Python
- The topmost advantage of Python is that it uses simple codes which are easy to read. It is not repetitive, but it is based on English and can be easily understood and followed. Therefore, it’s a good choice for novice programmers.
- Python has a huge collection of libraries (Pandas, NumPy, Plotly, etc.) and frameworks (Flask, CherryPy, PyTorch, etc.) for different purposes that were updated into it over time. It opens up job prospects for programmers
- It is a multi-paradigm programming language because it is object-oriented as well as procedural. Its object-oriented nature allows varied inheritances and the summarization of functions and data into one. As it is a procedural language it allows reusability of code as well.
- Python is compatible with a variety of platforms. Users need not change code before moving a project from one platform to another because it’s a portable language.
- Python is an open-source language, meaning that its source code can be modified and downloaded at any time. This versatile feature is what distinguishes it from other languages and laid the foundation for a strong community.
- Python can easily be integrated or embedded into codes written in other popular languages like Java, C, and C++ because it is an extensible language.
Disadvantages of Python
- Python is not originally designed to be used by mobile developers and therefore it is not considered an ideal app for mobile development. Nevertheless, there’s a cross-platform Python framework named Kivy that can be used for developing mobile applications.
- Programs written in Python consume a lot of memory and because of this reason; Python is not an ideal option for running intensive memory tasks as well.
- Python has certain design restrictions or limitations. Since it’s a dynamically typed language that uses duck typing, it sometimes identifies certain types of variables and causes runtime errors.
Since Swift takes some of its features from Python and plenty of other programming languages, there are plenty of features that both of them have in common. Nevertheless, there are differences as well and for any developer or programmer, it is necessary to understand the features of both these programming languages so that they can correctly use them in the right place. For example, Python is not preferred for education, prototyping, mobile development, and Quality Assurance Services whereas the major disadvantage of Swift is that there are very few developers who are skilled in this language. According to a recently conducted survey, Python is at the top of the list of the ‘most popular programming languages’ and Swift is climbing up to the 9th position.
