When talking about Python vs. PHP as the most versatile language for web applications, it’s easy to start a war online. People have their own preferences, and it can be hard to convince them otherwise. But if you’re in a position to choose between these for your new web application, here are some thoughts on their strengths and weaknesses.
Does popularity matter to you? If so, you should know that PHP has a market share of 62.72% while Python only has 0.68%. On one hand, popularity doesn’t translate into usability, but it does count for something to know that one language is used orders of magnitude more than the other one.
Python and PHP are actually not that different—they’re both open source object-oriented interpreted languages and they both run on a variety of operating systems. They are also both easy to learn and have extensive documentation and thriving online communities.
Here are some of the key differences:
- Python is an aspect-oriented language, while PHP is object-oriented
- Python is considered a very flexible programming language, while PHP is more rigid
- Python easily loads additional libraries with the help of special packages, while PHP requires loading these libraries manually
- With PHP, software security requires additional tools, while Python is considered inherently safe
- PHP was created specifically to support web applications. Python can support a graphical user interface and be used in web development, but it’s less intuitive in this regard. However, as soon as you start doing something more complex on the backend, Python’s flexibility makes it the better choice.
CanSpace supports both of these languages, as well as many others. We encourage our clients to play around with all tools available to them, to settle on the one they prefer!
