In recent years, the emphasis on web development has increased enormously. Nowadays, people look for responsive websites design with ease of development. Thus, companies search for programming languages that can help them build feature-rich interactive websites.
The most popular web programming languages developers use are PHP and Python. And these languages are in a constant battle to win the position of the most influential and popular programming languages.
However, both of them are ideal for their own task and can be used as a web language for your project based on your requirements.
Now the real question is, which language to choose and when?
We will attempt to explore this question in this article with a detailed comparison of the characteristics of both PHP and Python programming languages.
Complexity
Python is a high-level interpreted language having tremendous library support, whereas PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language. PHP and Python are similar in some instances; both are dynamically typed and object-oriented languages.
However, these languages are different in terms of ease of use; Python is used for developing standalone programs, PHP language’s primary domain is to create dynamic websites and web applications.
Python is easy to understand and has high readability; on the other hand, PHP can be comparatively complicated due to its rigid syntaxes.
Speed
Speed is one of the most prominent elements to test a digital product, whether it is a mobile app, website, or software. In the case of Python, it comes with external libraries, modules, and packages that can help you with quick web development services and that too with excellent reusability of the code.
PHP has its popular framework, Laravel, that comes with its own valuable features like authentication, routing, templating, and more to make developers work easy and fast.
Scalability
When you spend your time and money, you want an application that quickly adapts to market shifts and customer requirements. Both PHP and Python are suitable for web app development as they have their respective frameworks like Laravel and Django that are very fast, safe, and scalable.
Python can easily be integrated with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
Versatility
As the web development trends are changing, websites are no longer restricted to simple pages with some information. Advanced technologies like AI/AR, ML, Chatbots, etc., are becoming an essential part of web applications.
We mentioned above how Django supports machine learning solutions, enabling developers to use decoupled and independent components. Businesses can provide interactive and seamless user experience through advanced AI and machine learning solutions on the web.
Thus, Python web development is slightly better for versatility in supporting different technologies.
Performance
Python was better than PHP a few years ago in terms of performance. However, the PHP development team did a fantastic job in improving its performance. Now, PHP can quickly process vast amounts of data.
However, there are other parameters that can also affect the performance despite the programming language used, such as system memory, hardware resources, code logic, RAM, etc.
Security
The Python framework Django comes with built-in security features to protect web apps from security threats. Unlike any other programming language, the security depends on the code a developer writes.
However, Python is still the most recommended language out of two in terms of security.
When it comes to security, PHP has a bad reputation due to being a server-side scripting language. But, as the security concern has been rising, such issues have been addressed from time to time.
Community Support
Community support is a great way to decide on which language to choose, as the larger the community is, the more help you can get in the development process.
In this case, both PHP and Python developers can be assured of help or valuable insights from a vast community.
However, Python was released earlier in 1991; thus, it has enormous community support.
Conclusion
We hope that the points mentioned above will be helpful for you to decide what language to choose for web development. Although, these are not the only determining aspects; instead, you need to know the requirements and demands of the web application you are going to develop before the project development.
When your language choice is based on your project needs, you can efficiently achieve your business goals through your website.
Author’s Bio
Tom Hardy has been working in Sparx IT Solutions for more than 6 years as a Sr. Web Developer. His main domain of work is Python web development, front-end development, and eCommerce solutions. In his career, he has delivered several new and innovative solutions for various companies of different sizes.
