Scala Vs Python in In-Depth

Before going to start reading this post, if you are really want to learn Scala from scratch you can refer my previous Post as well, that is one of them this Scala series.

Scala

The name Scala stands for “scalable language.” The language is so named
because it was designed to grow with the demands of its users. You can apply
Scala to a wide range of programming tasks, from writing small scripts to
building large systems.Scala is easy to get into. It runs on the standard Java platform and interoperate sseamlessly with all Java libraries. It’s quite a good languagefor writing scripts that pull together Java components. But it can apply its strengths even more when used for building large systems and frameworks of reusable components. Scala is a blend of object-oriented and functional programming concepts in a statically typed language. The fusion of object-oriented and functional programming shows up in many different aspects of Scala; it is probably more pervasive than in any other widely used language.

Easy to writing complex code :

var capital = Map(“US” >“Washington”, “France” >“Paris”)
capital += (“India” >“Delhi”)
println(capital(“France”))

This program sets up a map from countries to their capitals, modifies the map
by adding a new binding (“Japan” >“Tokyo”), and prints the capital associated with the country France.

Associative maps are very useful because they help keep programs legible
and concise.

Scala’s roots:-

Scala’s design has been influenced by many programming languages and
ideas in programming language research. In fact, only a few features of
Scala are genuinely new; most have been already applied in some form in
other languages. Scala’s innovations come primarily from how its constructs
are put together. In this section, we list the main influences on Scala’s design.
The list cannot be exhaustive — there are simply too many smart ideas around
in programming language design to enumerate them all here.
At the surface level, Scala adopts a large part of the syntax of Java and
C#, which in turn borrowed most of their syntactic conventions from C and
C++. Expressions, statements, and blocks are mostly as in Java, as is the syntax of classes, packages and imports.15 Besides syntax, Scala adopts
other elements of Java, such as its basic types, its class libraries, and its
execution model.

Python.

Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language. It has efficient high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming. Python’s elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on most platforms.

The Python interpreter and the extensive standard library are freely available in source or binary form for all major platforms from the Python Web site, https://www.python.org/, and may be freely distributed. The same site also contains distributions of and pointers to many free third party Python modules, programs and tools, and additional documentation.

The Python interpreter is easily extended with new functions and data types implemented in C or C++ (or other languages callable from C). Python is also suitable as an extension language for customizable applications.

Python Interpreter.

The Python interpreter is usually installed as /usr/local/bin/python3.9 on those machines where it is available; putting /usr/local/bin in your Unix shell’s search path makes it possible to start it by typing the command:

python3.9

to the shell. 1 Since the choice of the directory where the interpreter lives is an installation option, other places are possible; check with your local Python guru or system administrator. (E.g., /usr/local/python is a popular alternative location.)

Interactive Mode

When commands are read from a tty, the interpreter is said to be in interactive mode. In this mode it prompts for the next command with the primary prompt, usually three greater-than signs (>>>); for continuation lines it prompts with the secondary prompt, by default three dots (...). The interpreter prints a welcome message stating its version number and a copyright notice before printing the first prompt:

$ python3.9
Python 3.9 (default, June 4 2019, 09:25:04)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Python vs Scala:

Python is a dynamically typed language || Scala is a statically typed language.

Python is easy to learn and use. || Scala is less difficult to learn than Python.

An extra work is created for the interpreter at the runtime|| No extra work is created in Scala and thus it is 10 times faster than Python.

The data types are decided by it during runtime || This is not the case in Scala that is why while dealing with large data process, Scala should be considered instead of Python

Python’s Community is huge compared to Scala || Scala also has good community support. But still, it is lesser than Python.

Python supports heavyweight process forking and doesn’t support proper multithreading || Scala has reactive cores and a list of asynchronous libraries and hence Scala is a better choice for implementing concurrency.

Its methodologies are much complex in Python as it is dynamic programming language || Testing is much better in scala because it is a statically typed language.

It is popular because of its English-like syntax || For scalable and concurrent systems, Scala play much bigger.

Python is easy for the developers to write code in it || Scala is less difficult to learn than Python and it is difficult to write code in Scala.

There is an interface in Python to many OS system calls and libraries. It has many interpreters || It is basically a compiled language and all source codes are compiled before execution.

Python language is highly prone to bugs whenever there is any change to the existing code || No such problem is seen in Scala.

Python can be used for small-scale projects || Scala can be used for large-scale projects.

It doesn’t provide scalable feature support || It provides scalable feature support.

Thanks for Reading this blog !!

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/java-vs-scala-7ff9eb50141