Hello guys, if you are thinking about a career in techs like programming, web development, data science, test automation, machine learning and other careers Java and Python are two of the most popular and influential programming languages of the present time and future to start with.

Beginner programmers often gets confused between Java and Python. Being an author of a Java blog and a programmer, I often receive questions like should I learn Java or Python? Is Python is an excellent programming language to start with? Which programming language would you recommend for beginners to learn first etc?

Since I am a Java developer, my opinion is biased, I will always suggest you start with Java and then learn Python, but if you ask this question to a Python developer, you might get just the opposite answer.

There are also different scenarios like in general Python is better for Web development, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Test automation, and Java is better for complex server-side programming, mobile apps with Android, and for building REST APIs.

In this article, I'll focus on which programming language is better for beginners, not just from the ease of learning point of view but also from the jobs and career point of view because many of you are learning to code for job and career and not for fun.

I have well documented my reasons as to why Java is the best Programming language and Why a programmer should learn Java. One of the most important reasons you would see in that blog post is an active Java community, which will help you throughout your Java career.

You can ask some beginner stuff starting from how to set PATH and classpath to advanced material about debugging Java program in Eclipse, no matter what kind of question is, there is always someone is Java community, who is ready to answer and help you.

This is one of the reasons that StackOverflow is full of Java questions. By the way, Python is not a spring chicken anymore, it has fully grown and given stiff competition to mainstream languages like Java and C++.

When I first come across Python, I thought it’s a scripting language, but
that is an understatement. You can do object-oriented programming in
Python as well. It’s also used heavily in web development sites like
Reddit are build using Python and machine learning, and data science
makes Python even more useful.

On beginners point of view, I always suggest pick a language which is easier to learn, powerful to attract you and have strong community support, now both Java and Python fits this bill, and until you do some excellent comparative analysis, you can not decide which language to learn from Java vs. Python.

Thankfully, we have an infographic, which highlights some vital difference between Python and Java, I am sure after taking a look on this Infographic, you will be able to decide which is the right programming language to start with.

If you already made up your mind to go with Java, then The Complete Java Masterclass course by Tim Buchalaka on Udemy is an excellent course to start with. It’s not only the most up-to-date course and covers the latest Java features from recent releases but also the most comprehensive and
well-structured course which makes learning way easy.

Python vs. Java — Infographic

Being two different programming languages, Java and Python can be useful tools for modern developers for developing applications.

Before learning any programming language, it is a must to know the difference between them. It could be wrong to declare that Java can be less productive compared to Python due to numerous elements.

Let’s go through this infographics to learn some differences:

Infographic Via Perception System

From this Infographic, you can easily see that Java is very verbose than Python. It takes 10 lines of code to read from a file in Java,
while it only takes 2 lines of code in Python. This point goes towards
Python because beginner programmer definitely likes to write less code.

The second point is about the static and dynamic type of variable, In my
opinion, you need a strict programming language and compiler to detect
silly mistakes made by beginners, In Java, you can not store an integer
value in a String variable.

So on this point, my vote goes to Java. Speed, which is a crucial thing on enterprise-level application development, you can see that Java is faster than Python, but do remember that you need to compile and run Java program, while Python doesn’t need to be compiled.

Python shell can directly interpret python commands, which means easier for programmers. So now Python and Java are both 2 and 2.

This is an important reason to learn Python for beginners because it just makes it easy to try and learn, and if you choose to learn Python, then The Complete Python Bootcamp by Jose Portilla on Udemy is an excellent place to start with. It covers Python 3 from scratch

Things have improved with the introduction of JShell in Java 9, but I still rank Python better in terms of quickly whipping up a script and running.

You can also see that hello world in Java takes more lines than hello world
in python. The rest of the examples you can analyze by yourself, but
all it comes that both Java and Python are equally capable, no one is
lesser than others.

As a Java developer, I can say from my personal experience that you will not regret learning Java and choose it as a career; of course, you can learn Python anytime, and it’s suitable for writing small utilities, but Java is Java.

How to Learn Java and Python from Scratch?

If you are serious about your programming career and want to start learning Java or Python right away then here are some recommended books, courses, and tutorials you can check out:

1. The Complete Java Masterclass
2. The Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from zero to hero in Python
3. The Java Developer RoadMap
4. 10 Things Java Programmers Should Learn
5. 10 Free Courses to learn Python
6. My favorite free courses to learn Java in depth
7. Core Java Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Cay S. Horstmann
8. 10 Books Every Java Developer should read
9. Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp
10. 10 Best Python Courses from Udemy
11. My Favorite Python Courses from Coursera
12. Top 5 Website to learn Python Coding for FREE

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