Node.js vs. Python and to choose the best to develop backend
Choosing a backend programming language is never an easy task. After all, different languages have their pros and cons that you need to consider to make sure it is the right tool for the application you’re trying to build.
Node.js and Python are some of the most popular choices for backend development. Both have very strong package ecosystems and communities and choosing between the two can be difficult.
In this article, we will analyze the pro and cons of both Node.js and Python, and see the scenarios where one would be better than the other so that you can make the best choice for your backend.
What is Node.js?
Node.js is an asynchronous JavaScript runtime that runs on Google’s V8 engine. It is commonly used for building real-time applications, backends, and desktop and mobile applications.
Node.js is multi-paradigm and supports the following paradigms:
- Event-driven
- Imperative
- Object-oriented
- Functional programming
Node was developed by Ryan Dahl and was released in 2009, becoming an instant hit as it allowed JavaScript developers to write JavaScript code outside the web browser for the first time. Over the years, it has grown and become a strong contender to older languages like Python, and offers a bunch of tools for backend development, such as Express.js, Fastify, and NestJS.
Node.js is single-threaded, non-blocking, and implements an event-driven architecture. It has a single thread where all code you write and the libraries you use executes. It also makes use of other threads that the libuv C library provides to handle expensive or long-running tasks.
Node.js uses callbacks to signal the completion of long-running tasks, and once finished, they are added to a task queue before finally being added back to the main thread. This behavior is what makes Node.js non-blocking because expensive tasks don’t block the main thread; instead, they execute in separate libuv threads, and Node.js continues executing other parts of the source code.
What is Python?
Python is an interpreted, general-purpose programming language commonly used for scripting, backend development, machine learning, and data science, to mention a few. It supports multiple paradigms such as:
- Procedural
- Object-oriented
- Functional programming
It was designed and developed by Guido van Rossum, and was released in 1991 to mainstream success; Big companies such as Google, Facebook, Dropbox, and Instagram use it for both their internal and external tools
Python is constantly evolving, and it has mature web frameworks and you can also use in your backend development projects.
Python is also a single-threaded language, largely because it implements a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), a mechanism that allows only one thread to take hold of the Python interpreter and run Python code at a given time. Even if the Python program uses multiple threads, the GIL will switch among the threads at regular intervals to give each thread a chance to execute code — but they cannot execute in parallel by default. This behavior is what makes Python single-threaded.
Unlike Node.js, Python is not based on an event-driven architecture. However, you can still leverage it using the asyncio package, which allows you to write asynchronous code with the async/await syntax since it implements the event loop, futures, etc.
Comparing architectures
Even though the language’s architectures are different, both languages are good choices and can support synchronous and asynchronous programming.
Comparing Concurrency and parallelism
- Concurrency: when two or more tasks execute in multiple threads, but not at the same time. Instead, execution switches between the tasks, and when the computer interrupts a task to switch to another one, it can continue executing the other task from the interruption point
- Parallelism: when multiple tasks execute in different threads at the same time
Python’s threading module pales in comparison to the Node.js <span class="pln">worker_thread</span> module, which can achieve concurrency and parallelism easily. Node.js wins because it supports concurrency and parallelism without requiring a workaround, as Python does.
Comparing Performance and speed
A faster backend can reduce your server response times, which in turn boosts page speed. A good page speed can help your web application rank well on Google, and give your users a good experience.
The speed of a programming language tends to go together with how the source code is executed. Let’s explore how Node.js and Python compare during execution and how it affects each of their execution speeds.
Node.js is the winner because it executes as fast as it is compiled down to machine code, while Python is interpreted with the PVM, a process that tends to slow down execution.
Comparing Scalability
When an application gets traction, the following happens:
- Client requests increase, due to a higher number of users
- The amount of data that needs processing increases
- New features are introduced
The Node.js cluster module allows Node apps to scale more easily in comparison to Python. However, it’s important to acknowledge that most people these days are using Docker for scaling.
With Docker, you can create multiple containers where each container contains an instance of your application. You can create as many containers as there are cores available on your system, and put a load balancer in each to distribute the requests. So, whether you go with Python or Node.js, you can use Docker to make scaling easier.
Conclusion
In this post we have looked at the differences between Python and Node.js, To choose between Node.js and Python as a backend language heavily depends on the kind of application you want to build.