Python vs Javascript comparison

Recently, I started to develop some Python things due to work needs. Since I have been using Javascript before, I unconsciously use some Javascript concepts, syntax, etc., and often fall into pits. I think it is necessary to summarize the differences between them when switching from Javascript to Python.

Basic concepts

Python and Javascript are both scripting languages, so they have many common features, both require an interpreter to run, both are dynamic types, both support automatic memory management, and both can call eval() to execute scripts, etc. features common to scripting languages.

However, they are also very different. Javascript was originally designed as a client-side scripting language, mainly used in browsers. Its syntax mainly draws on C, while Python is due to its "elegant", "clear", " It is popular for its "simple" design and is used in different scenarios such as education, scientific computing, and web development.

Programming Paradigms

Both Python and Javascript support a variety of different programming paradigms, and they are very different in terms of object-oriented programming. Javascript's object-oriented approach is based on prototype. The inheritance of objects is created by prototypes (also objects). Objects created by prototype objects inherit the methods on the prototype chain. Python, on the other hand, is quite standard based on class (class) inheritance and naturally supports polymorphism (polymorphine).

OO in Pyhton

class Employee:
   'Common base class for all employees'
   empCount = 0 ##类成员
  
   def __init__(self, name, salary):
      self.name = name
      self.salary = salary
      Employee.empCount += 1
     
   def displayCount(self):
     print "Total Employee %d" % Employee.empCount
  
   def displayEmployee(self):
      print "Name : ", self.name,  ", Salary: ", self.salary
## 创建实例
ea = Employee("a",1000)
eb = Employee("b",2000)
OO in Javascript
var empCount = 0;
//构造函数
function Employee(name, salary){
    this.name = name;
    this.salary = salary;   
    this.empCount += 1;
}
  
Employee.prototype.displayCount = function(){
    console.log("Total Employee " + empCount );
}
  
Employee.prototype.displayEmployee = function(){
    console.log("Name " + this.name + ", Salary " + this.salary );
}
//创建实例
var ea = new Employee("a",1000);
var eb = new Employee("b",2000);

Because it is based on object inheritance, in Javascript, we cannot use the class member empCount, so we have to declare a global variable. Of course, in actual development, we will use a more appropriate scope. Note that Javascript requires the new keyword to create objects, but Python does not.

In addition to native prototype-based inheritance, there are many Javascript OO tools that use closures or prototypes to simulate class inheritance. Since it is not a property of the language itself, we will not discuss it.

Threading model

In the world of JavaScript, there is no concept of multi-threading. Concurrency is carried out in an event-driven manner. All JavaScript programs run in one thread. The introduction of web workers in HTML5 can process tasks concurrently, but it does not change the single-thread limit of Javascript.

Python supports multi-threading through the thread package.

Immutable type (immutable type)

In Python, some data types are immutable, which means that this type of data cannot be modified, and all modifications will return new objects. All data types in Javascript can be changed. I think Python introduced immutable types to support thread safety, and because Javascript is a single-threaded model, there is no need to introduce immutable types.

Of course in Javascript you can define the properties of an object as read-only.

var obj = {};Object.defineProperty(obj, "prop", {
    value: "test",
    writable: false});

In the support of ECMAScript5, you can also call the freeze method of Object to make the object unmodifiable.

Object.freeze(obj)

Data types

Javascript data types are relatively simple, including object, string, boolean, number, null and undefined, a total of six types

Everything in Python is an object, such as module and function , class, etc. are all.

Python has five built-in simple data types bool, int, long, float and complex, as well as container types, code types, internal types and so on.

Boolean

Javascript has true and false. Python has True and False. There is no difference between them except case.

Strings

Javascript is encoded in UTF16.

Python uses ASCII code. You need to call encode and decode to perform encoding conversion. Use u as the prefix to specify that the string uses Unicode encoding.

Numbers

All numeric types in Javascript are implemented as 64-bit floating point numbers. Supports NaN (Not a number), plus or minus infinity (+/-Infiity).

Python has many numerical types, among which the plural type is very convenient, so Python is very popular in the fields of scientific research and education. This should be one of the reasons. NaN is not defined in Python, and the division by zero operation will throw an exception.

List

Javascript has a built-in array type (array is also an object)

Python’s list (List) is relatively close to Javascript’s Array, while a tuple (Tuple) can be understood as an immutable list.

Except for finding the length in Python, which uses the built-in method len, basically both Javascript and Python provide similar methods to operate on lists. The operation of list subscripts in Python is very flexible and convenient, which is something that Javascript does not have. For example, l[5:-1], l[:6], etc.

Dictionary, hash table, object

{} is widely used in Javascript to create objects. These objects are no different from dictionaries. You can use [] or . to access the members of the object. Members can be added, modified and deleted dynamically. You can think of an object as a Javascript dictionary or hash table. The object's key must be a string.

Python has a built-in hash table (dictS). Unlike Javascript, dictS can have various types of key values.

Null value

Javascript defines two types of null values. undefined means that the variable has not been initialized, and null means that the variable has been initialized but the value is empty.

Python中不存在未初始化的值，如果一个变量值为空，Python使用None来表示。

Javascript中变量的声明和初始化

v1;
v2 = null;
var v3;
var v4 = null;
var v5 = 'something';

   

在如上的代码中v1是全局变量，未初始化，值为undefined；v2是全局变量，初始化为空值；v3为局部未初始化变量，v4是局部初始化为空值的变量；v5是局部已初始化为一个字符处的变量。

Python中变量的声明和初始化

v1 = None

v2 = 'someting'

Python中的变量声明和初始化就简单了许多。当在Python中访问一个不存在的变量时，会抛出NameError的异常。当访问对象或者字典的值不存在的时候，会抛出AttributeError或者KeyError。因此判断一个值是否存在在Javascript和Python中需要不一样的方式。

Javascript中检查某变量的存在性：

if (!v ) {
    // do something if v does not exist or is null or is false
}
  
if (v === undefined) {
    // do something if v does not initialized
}

   

注意使用!v来检查v是否初始化是有歧义的因为有许多种情况!v都会返回true

Python中检查某变量的存在性：

try:
    v
except NameError
    ## do something if v does not exist

   

在Python中也可以通过检查变量是不是存在于局部locals（）或者全局globals（）来判断是否存在该变量。

类型检查

Javascript可以通过typeof来获得某个变量的类型：

typeof in Javascript 的例子：

typeof 3 // "number"
typeof "abc" // "string"
typeof {} // "object"
typeof true // "boolean"
typeof undefined // "undefined"
typeof function(){} // "function"
typeof [] // "object"
typeof null // "object"

   

要非常小心的使用typeof，从上面的例子你可以看到，typeof null居然是object。因为javscript的弱类型特性，想要获得更实际的类型，还需要结合使用instanceof，constructor等概念。具体请参考这篇文章

Python提供内置方法type来获得数据的类型。

>>> type([]) is list
True
>>> type({}) is dict
True
>>> type('') is str
True
>>> type(0) is int
True

   

同时也可以通过isinstance()来判断类的类型

class A:
    pass
class B(A):
    pass
isinstance(A(), A)  # returns True
type(A()) == A      # returns True
isinstance(B(), A)    # returns True
type(B()) == A        # returns False

   

但是注意Python的class style发生过一次变化，不是每个版本的Python运行上述代码的行为都一样，在old style中，所有的实例的type都是‘instance’，所以用type方法来检查也不是一个好的方法。这一点和Javascript很类似。

自动类型转换

当操作不同类型一起进行运算的时候，Javascript总是尽可能的进行自动的类型转换，这很方便，当然也很容易出错。尤其是在进行数值和字符串操作的时候，一不小心就会出错。我以前经常会计算SVG中的各种数值属性，诸如x，y坐标之类的，当你一不小心把一个字符串加到数值上的时候，Javascript会自动转换出一个数值，往往是NaN，这样SVG就完全画不出来啦，因为自动转化是合法的，找到出错的地方也非常困难。

Python在这一点上就非常的谨慎，一般不会在不同的类型之间做自动的转换。

语法

风格

Python使用缩进来决定逻辑行的结束非常具有创造性，这也许是Python最独特的属性了，当然也有人对此颇具微词，尤其是需要修改重构代码的时候，修改缩进往往会引起不小的麻烦。

Javascript虽然名字里有Java，它的风格也有那么一点像Java，可是它和Java就好比雷峰塔和雷锋一样，真的没有半毛钱的关系。到时语法上和C比较类似。这里必须要提到的是coffeescript作为构建与Javascript之上的一种语言，采用了类似Python的语法风格，也是用缩进来决定逻辑行。

Python风格

def func(list):
    for i in range(0,len(list)):
        print list[i]
Javascript风格
function funcs(list) {
    for(var i=0, len = list.length(); i < len; i++) {
        console.log(list[i]);
    }
}

   

从以上的两个代码的例子可以看出，Python确实非常简洁。

作用范围和包管理

Javascript的作用域是由方法function来定义的，也就是说同一个方法内部拥有相同的作用域。这个严重区别与C语言使用{}来定义的作用域。Closure是Javascript最有用的一个特性。

Python的作用域是由module，function，class来定义的。

Python的import可以很好的管理依赖和作用域，而Javascript没有原生的包管理机制，需要借助AMD来异步的加载依赖的js文件，requirejs是一个常用的工具。

赋值逻辑操作符

Javascript使用=赋值，拥有判断相等（==）和全等（===）两种相等的判断。其它的逻辑运算符有&& 和||，和C语言类似。

Python中没有全等，或和与使用的时and 和 or，更接近自然语言。Python中没有三元运算符 A ：B ？C，通常的写法是

（A and B) or C

因为这样写有一定的缺陷，也可以写作

 B if A else C

Python对赋值操作的一个重要的改进是不允许赋值操作返回赋值的结果，这样做的好处是避免出现在应该使用相等判断的时候错误的使用了赋值操作。因为这两个操作符实在太像了，而且从自然语言上来说它们也没有区别。

++运算符

Python不支持++运算符，没错你再也不需要根据++符号在变量的左右位置来思考到底是先加一再赋值呢还是先赋值再加一。

连续赋值

利用元组（tuple），Python可以一次性的给多个变量赋值

(MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY) = range(7)

函数参数

Python的函数参数支持命名参数和可选参数（提供默认值），使用起来很方便，Javascript不支持可选参数和默认值（可以通过对arguments的解析来支持）

def info(object, spacing=10, collapse=1):

    ... ...

其它

立即调用函数表达式 （IIFE）

Javascript的一个方便的特性是可以立即调用一个刚刚声明的匿名函数。也有人称之为自调用匿名函数。

下面的代码是一个module模式的例子，使用闭包来保存状态实现良好的封装。这样的代码可以用在无需重用的场合。

var counter = (function(){
    var i = 0;
    return {
        get: function(){
            return i;
            },
        set: function( val ){
            i = val;
            },
        increment: function() {
            return ++i;
            }
        };
    }());

   

Python没有相应的支持。

生成器和迭代器（Generators & Iterator）

在我接触到的Python代码中，大量的使用这样的生成器的模式。

Python生成器的例子

# a generator that yields items instead of returning a list
def firstn(n):
    num = 0
    while num < n:
        yield num
        num += 1
    
sum_of_first_n = sum(firstn(1000000))

   

Javascript1.7中引入了一些列的新特性，其中就包括生成器和迭代器。然而大部分的浏览器除了Mozilla（Mozilla基本上是在自己玩，下一代的Javascript标准应该是ECMAScript5）都不支持这些特性

Javascript1.7 迭代器和生成器的例子。

function fib() {
  var i = 0, j = 1;
  while (true) {
    yield i;
    var t = i;
    i = j;
    j += t;
  }
}；
  
var g = fib();
for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
  console.log(g.next());
}

   

列表（字典、集合）映射表达式 （List、Dict、Set Comprehension）

Python的映射表达式可以非常方便的帮助用户构造列表、字典、集合等内置数据类型。

下面是列表映射表达式使用的例子：

>>> [x + 3 for x in range(4)]
[3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> {x + 3 for x in range(4)}
{3, 4, 5, 6}
>>> {x: x + 3 for x in range(4)}
{0: 3, 1: 4, 2: 5, 3: 6}

   

Javascript1.7开始也引入了Array Comprehension

var numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4];
var doubled = [i * 2 for (i of numbers)];

   

Lamda表达式 （Lamda Expression ）

Lamda表达式是一种匿名函数，基于著名的λ演算。许多语言诸如C#，Java都提供了对lamda的支持。Pyhton就是其中之一。Javascript没有提供原生的Lamda支持。但是有第三方的Lamda包。

g = lambda x : x*3

装饰器（Decorators）

Decorator是一种设计模式，大部分语言都可以支持这样的模式，Python提供了原生的对该模式的支持，算是一种对程序员的便利把。

Decorator的用法如下。

@classmethod
def foo (arg1, arg2):
    ....