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Differences and Similarities between Python and other Programming Languages
Aditya Raj
2 years ago
Table of Content
What are the different types
of Programming Languages?
- Low-Level Programming Languages
- Machine Level Language
- Assembly Level Language
- High-Level Programming Languages
- Procedure Oriented Programming Language
- Problem-Oriented Programming
- Language Natural Languages
Types of Programming
Languages based on the Programming Paradigm
- Procedural Programming Languages
- Functional Programming Languages
- Object-Oriented Programming Languages
- Logical-Programming Languages
Types of Programming
Languages based on execution
- Compiled Programming Languages
- Interpreted Programming Languages
Why should you learn Python Programming?
- Difference between C and Python
- Difference between Java and Python
Summary
Introduction
You must be scared of Python as a human being. But, you will love Python if you are a programmer. Python is one of the best programming languages to learn programming and is widely accepted nowadays. In this article, we will discuss different types of programming languages, their similarities and differences with a python programming language, and why Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn. We will also discuss the differences between Python and the two other most widely used languages that are Java and C. This will help us to find out how python is different from other languages.
What are the different types of Programming Languages?
We can classify programming languages on the basis of different criteria. For example, we can differentiate them on the basis of programming paradigm, level of expressiveness or how they are executed by the computer. We will look at each aspect of programming languages for their classification.
The first criterion for classifying the programming languages is whether the program written in that language is easily understandable to machines or easily understandable to humans. In other words, programming languages will be classified on the basis of their level of expressiveness. Based on these criteria, we can classify the programming languages into two classes, which are named Low-level programming language and high-level programming language.
Low-Level Programming Languages
Low-level programming languages are those languages that are more understandable to computer hardware. These languages are very efficient in execution but are hard to understand for a human. Low-level programming languages are further classified into machine language and assembly language.
Machine Level Language
Machine language only consists of 0s and 1s, and it is readily understandable by the processor of the computer. It is very fast in execution and uses memory most efficiently.
Despite its efficiency, machine language is not directly used by programmers because they consist of only 0s and 1s and are very hard to understand for a human. Even if someone is an expert in machine language and can code in it, it is very hard to read and understand the code. This will cause a major problem during debugging of the code if any error occurs in the program. Due to this reason, programmers nowadays write programs in high-level languages, which are converted to machine language before execution by the processor.
Assembly Level Language
Assembly language is closest to machine language and is also classified as a low-level language. Assembly language uses mnemonics and register values instead of 0s and 1s. To write a program in assembly language, we need to know the hardware specifications of the computer. This is because, in assembly language, the user manually allocates memory and registers for the execution of the program. Once the program is written with the help of mnemonics, it is converted to the machine language by the assembler.
Compared to machine language, assembly language makes programming easier as we don't have to use only 0s and 1s. We can use mnemonics like ADD for addition, SUB for subtraction,
MUL for multiplication, and DIV for division. Each statement in assembly language is written using mnemonics, registers, and memory values. Due to better readability, assembly languages make it easy for a programmer to write programs. It is also easier to debug them when an error occurs.
Despite all its advantages over machine language, assembly language has some disadvantages too. The first being that programs are needed to be converted into machine language by the assembler. Hence programs are less efficient than programs written in machine language. The second disadvantage of assembly languages is that they are machine-dependent, and programs written on a machine cannot be executed on other machines. Due to this, one has to always keep in mind the architecture of the computer before executing any assembly program on the computer.
Due to the less readability of low-level languages, high-level languages were developed, which are discussed in the following section.
High-Level Programming Languages
High-level programming languages were developed to solve the problem of less understandability of programs written in low-level languages. Although high-level languages were inefficient during execution when compared to low-level languages, they were accepted widely by the programming community due to their similarity with human languages.
High-level languages use statements written in language resembling the English language and are easier to learn. For execution, high-level languages are converted to machine language by the compiler or interpreter. High-level languages are not dependent on the architecture of the computer on which they are being written and hence are portable between different devices.
Increased readability also makes it easier to debug and remove errors from a program written in a high-level language.
High-level languages can be further classified into procedure-oriented language, problem-oriented language, and natural language, which are discussed below.
Procedure Oriented Programming Language
Procedure-oriented languages define a program in a sequence of different atomic statements. For any input, the procedure is written in steps that are executed to obtain the desired result; hence the languages are named procedure-oriented languages. Some examples of procedure-oriented languages include C, Pascal, COBOL, and FORTRAN.
With procedure-oriented languages, we can solve complex real-world computational problems. Moreover, Due to the language being machine-independent, programmers need not care about the architecture of the computer while writing programs in procedure-oriented languages. The only focus of a programmer is on the logic of the program.
All the programs written in procedure-oriented languages are converted into machine language during execution. This extra work makes these languages costly in execution compared to low-level languages, but the increased readability and functionalities outweigh this disadvantage.
Problem-Oriented Programming Language
Problem-oriented languages are the high-level languages that allow the programmer to specify only the desired outputs for the inputs. The programmers do not need to specify the entire procedure that should be executed to output the desired result. Examples of these languages are database query languages, C#, Visual Basic and PHP.
Writing programs in problem-oriented languages are much easier as the programmer does not need to specify the entire procedure. This also reduces the errors in the program as most of the logic is handled by the computer itself.
Programs written in problem-oriented languages require more memory and execution time than procedure-oriented languages and are costlier to execute.
Natural Languages
Natural languages are still being developed. In these languages, users will need to specify the program in a natural language like English, and the rest will be handled by the computer itself. These languages are being developed using artificial intelligence and natural language processing. Being written in natural languages, programs written in these programming languages will be highly understandable.
The use of AI and natural language processing will also make the program costlier to execute, and machines with high computational powers will be needed to run such programs.
Types of Programming Languages based on the Programming Paradigm
Till now, we have discussed programming languages on the basis of the readability and understandability of the programs written in them. The high-level programming languages are further classified on the basis of the programming paradigm and nature of the program written in
the particular language. In the following sections, we will discuss the different programming paradigms and the programming languages associated with them.
Procedural Programming Languages
The procedural programming paradigm requires a programmer to write the sequence of statements that are to be executed to produce the result. Procedural programming languages use different programming constructs like variables, functions, for loops, while loops, switch statements, etc., to perform the task. Some examples of procedural programming languages are C, FORTRAN, Pascal, and COBOL.
In procedural programming languages, the focus is on writing the logic for computation. The tasks are executed with the help of functions. Functions consist of a sequence of statements written to perform a specific task. Each function receives input and produces a result. A sequence of different functions in the program is used to produce the desired result.
Functional Programming Languages
The functional programming paradigm also uses functions like the procedural programming paradigm. But In place of using for loops, while loops, switch statements, etc., functional programs rely on recursive functions to execute a computational task. The functions used in functional programming have no side effects, and the functions do not depend on the state of the program to produce the output.
Some examples of functional programming languages include Haskell, Scala, F#, Lisp, etc.
Object-Oriented Programming Languages
In the object-oriented programming paradigm, each entity is considered an object. Objects in the program correspond to real-world objects, and each object has its own properties.
Object-oriented programming languages define a program in terms of a collection of objects, and computations are done at the data associated with the object to output the desired result. Some examples of object-oriented programming languages are Java, Python, and C++. We can also write completely procedural programs in object-oriented programming languages, but it is advised not to do so.
Logical-Programming Languages
In the logical programming paradigm, the logic of the program is expressed using some facts and rules. With the facts and rules declared, for every input, the rules and facts are used to derive a result. The most famous logical programming language is Prolog.
Logical programming languages are used in proving theorems, building expert systems, and they are used in artificial intelligence and natural language processing.
Types of Programming Languages based on execution
We can also classify the programming languages based on how they are executed by the computer. There are mainly two types of programming languages in this regard, namely Compiled language and interpreted programming languages.
Compiled Programming Languages
Compiled programming languages are those languages that are entirely converted to machine language before execution. The conversion of the high-level program to machine language is done by the compiler, which also checks for errors in the syntax of the program and optimizes the code. The most commonly used compiled languages are C and C++.
Interpreted Programming Languages
The interpreted programming languages are translated into machine language at the time of execution by the interpreter. This makes these languages very slow. Moreover, syntax errors are also detected only at the time of execution. The most popular interpreted programming language is Python.
Why should you learn Python Programming?
Having seen different types of programming languages, we will now look at some of the differences between Python, C, and Java programming languages to understand the advantages and disadvantages of python programming over other languages.
Difference between C and Python
The most significant differences between C and Python programming are as follows.
- C is a procedural language, while Python is an object-oriented language.
- C is a compiled language, while Python is an interpreted language.
- C is a static-type language, and the data type of each variable is defined prior to the execution of the program. On the other hand, Python is a dynamically typed language and the data type of each variable is determined at runtime.
- Due to static typing and being a compiled language, Programs written in C are very fast. Whereas Python is an interpreted and dynamically typed language, due to which python programs are very slow compared to programs written in C.
- C has a concept of simple variables as well as pointers. Whereas Python has no concept of pointers, and each variable in Python is a reference to an object.
Difference between Python and Java
The most significant differences between programming in python and java are as follows.
- Java is a statically typed language, while Python is a dynamically typed language.
- Java programs are compiled into bytecodes, and then they are executed in JVMs, while python programs are directly interpreted by the interpreter.
- Java has a complex syntax when compared to Python, while python programs have very good readability.
- In Java, curly braces are used to define blocks of code, while Python uses indentation to define blocks of code.
- Java programs are first compiled and then interpreted, while Python is a completely interpreted language.
Having studied different types of programming languages and major differences between top programming languages like Python, Java, and C; We will now look at some of the reasons why Python is one of the best programming languages.
Python is one of the most popular programming languages for beginners because of its easy syntax. Having an easy syntax makes it easy for beginners to focus on the programming logic
instead of the syntax of the program. Also, the readability of python programs is very high due to the similarity of its syntax with the English language. It helps beginners to read and understand the programs in a better way.
In addition to ease of learning, Python is also a feature-rich language. It has dedicated modules and libraries for different tasks such as machine learning, data science, natural language processing, web development, etc. Python also has a big online community of programmers who contribute to hundreds of online forums, online posts, and resources, which will help you to learn python programming in an easy and efficient way.
Summary
In this article, we have discussed different types of programming languages based on different parameters. We have also briefly discussed the differences between some of the top programming languages like Java, C, and python. We have also seen how python is different from other languages in terms of syntax and execution. I hope this article has given you a good understanding of different programming languages so that you can choose a language that suits you. Python is one of the most popular programming languages and has everything you need if you are a beginner in programming.
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