Python vs Go: A Close Comparison

If you’ve spent any time working in the tech world, you’ve run across both Python and Go when researching popular coding languages. Both languages offer users the power to make app development a breeze. But in a comparison between Python vs. Go, is there a clear winner? When is Python the right language to choose, and what circumstances call for Go? Knowing which language is best for your needs helps you make an informed decision and set your project up for success.

You’ve come to the right place, my inquisitive reading buddies. Our guide looks at the two languages and shows you how each can be useful in your development work. We show you the languages’ origins, look at each code’s advantages, and highlight the key differences between the two. By the time you finish this article, your understanding of language will definitely be clearer and more in-depth. Our examination of Python and Go helps you identify the ideal language for you and starts your career off in style.

Origins of Each Language

Python has its origins in the early 1990s. Developed by Guido van Rossum, Python is an object-oriented, high-level, general-purpose coding language that focuses on code legibility and significant whitespace. The language is garbage-collected and dynamically-typed, and it supports a range of programming approaches, including procedural and functional programming.

Go, also known in some circles as Golang, is a compiled and statically-typed language. The code bears some resemblance to C, and programmers with experience in the latter find working with Go to be a simple switch. Go originated at Google in 2007, and the engineers that developed it wanted to create a language that combines the best aspects of previous languages and works well with modern multicore and networked systems.

Python’s Advantages

Both languages are popular and see heavy use, but Python has been around and available for much longer. As a result, much of the current application infrastructure has its roots in Python. This universality makes Python a ready go-to for all sorts of projects. Additionally, the language allows for cross-domain virtual utilization in diverse environments such as animation, machine learning, and graphics.

Python is still one of the key tools in a web developer’s kit, too. Python is perfect for tasks on web applications and is the foundation for tons of scientific projects, thanks to its scientific computing libraries. The language’s ubiquity ensures that it’s platform-ready across many operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, and Linux. And above all, Python aims to simplify the programming experience and make it intuitive by readily dealing with garbage collection and internal memory address concerns. 

Go’s Advantages

As the younger and sprier member of the coding team, Go has some advantages over its time-tested but venerable counterpart. Go’s open-source approach encourages evolution and continued development of the language, and it performs very well as a networking language within apps. And thanks to its concurrency model and CPU scalability, Go is a preferred choice for developers who want to squeeze the last drops of efficiency out of the system.

Thanks to its ease at handling multiple running processes, Go is a first choice for many programmers who work on system apps and other complex and hardware-intensive programs. It features run-time efficiency in the vein of C++ and also has JavaScript’s usability. And, because Go doesn’t have to execute runtime processes, it gets the job done with blazing speed most of the time.

Key Differences

Either language will do a bang-up job of whipping your app into shape, but there are some major differences between the two codes. Python has understandable syntax, but Go stands head and shoulders above it in terms of clarity and conciseness. Python lends itself well to complex systems, while Go works well for beginning developers. And, Go features a built-in concurrency mechanism, which Python lacks. 

Python has the upper hand when it comes to libraries—the language is bursting to the seams with libraries. Go is playing catch up in that arena, but it’s rapidly closing the gap. Typing the languages is different, too. Go is statically-typed instead of dynamically-typed like Python, and that makes catching syntax issues much easier. Finally, as an object-oriented language, Python supports exceptions, classes, and objects, while Go doesn’t support any of them.

And there you have it. Go and Python are both winning choices for an aspiring developer. Familiarising yourself with either code will help you land a great gig. Our guide examined the two languages and showed you the key differences between them.