The Pros and Cons of Using Python in Web Development
Python has emerged as one of the most versatile, dynamic, and flexible programming languages that a lot of developers choose over traditional languages like Java and C++. It finds use in lots of places such as in scientific and statistics applications, but it has also become a favoured programming language for web developers, too. Let us look at the pros and cons of using this versatile programming language.
A Short Learning Curve
Python is very easy to learn as it is intuitive and can be read almost as easily as one reads English. Python also has a much simpler syntax compared to programming languages such as C++.
Its simple syntax leads to a short learning curve, and you can start creating websites and web applications with it in less time.
Writing and reading code, crucial skills developers need to have, are very easy as long as you can follow the logical flow of a program written in Python.
Python Frameworks
Python has very mature and flexible web development frameworks in Django and Flask. Django is the more popular of the two because it gives you most of what you need to develop powerful websites before writing a single line of code.
Once you have Django up and running, you can customise it however you want with Python code, knowing that you are building on a solid base to start with.
Less Code
It takes little Python code to do whatever you want, especially if you are relying on frameworks like Django. This means that you can prototype ideas faster and even have a full website running quickly as soon as you build any sort of frontend.
Flexibility
Python can be used for a lot more than building backends and frontends. Developers can take advantage of the many Python libraries that are available to increase functionality and capabilities.
Speed
One of the biggest drawbacks to using Python for web development is speed. Python is a bit slower than other programming languages. This is because it is interpreted instead of compiled.
Interpreted languages are read line by line as they are executed while compiled languages are turned into machine code before execution.
This means interpreted languages are fast when coding and slow when executing, and compiled languages are slow when coding because they need to be compiled, but fast when executed because an extra step is removed.
Memory
Python uses a lot of memory, especially when building heavier applications. You might run into this issue once your web development project becomes too big and you have memory constraints on your development or production environments.
Threading
Because of how the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) works in Python, the programming language does not allow for multi-threading. This means Python runs on a single thread and this increases execution times, as the interpreter waits for threads to free up to start another process.
Conclusion
Python is a great programming language for web development because of how powerful and versatile it is. Although it does have some downsides, they only start being a concern if your application becomes large enough to need lots of resources.
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