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Flask vs Java: What are the differences?

Developers describe Flask as "a microframework for Python based on Werkzeug, Jinja 2 and good intentions". Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind. On the other hand, Java is detailed as "A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible". Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!.

Flask can be classified as a tool in the "Microframeworks (Backend)" category, while Java is grouped under "Languages".

"Lightweight", "Python" and "Minimal" are the key factors why developers consider Flask; whereas "Great libraries", "Widely used" and "Excellent tooling" are the primary reasons why Java is favored.

Flask is an open source tool with 45.2K GitHub stars and 12.7K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Flask's open source repository on GitHub.

Airbnb, Uber Technologies, and Spotify are some of the popular companies that use Java, whereas Flask is used by Netflix, reddit, and Lyft. Java has a broader approval, being mentioned in 2400 company stacks & 2726 developers stacks; compared to Flask, which is listed in 511 company stacks and 532 developer stacks.

Advice on Flask and Java
kristan-dev
Senior Solutions Analyst · | 8 upvotes · 315.6K views

My journey to developing REST APIs started with Flask Restful, and I've found it to be enough for the needs of my project back then. Now that I've started investing more time on personal projects, I've yet to decide if I should move to use Django for writing REST APIs. I often see job posts looking for Python+Django developers, but it's usually for full-stack developers. I'm primarily interested in Data Engineering, so most of my web projects are back end.

Should I continue with what I know (Flask) or move on to Django?

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Replies (1)
Rafael Torres
Technical Lead at 4Agile · | 9 upvotes · 306.1K views

If you want to be a Web developer with knowledge in another frontend and NoSql technology, maybe continue with Flask. However, if you want to create very fast solutions to grow up with a new business and merge these with data analysis and other tools, Django is the answer. Basically read more about the service architecture where you feel more comfortable, Microservice or Monolithic, but please will not married with any because they solve issues to different contexts.

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Kamal Makroum
Needs advice
on
JavaJavaPythonPython
and
ReactReact

Hi everyone.

I am willing to build a used car sales platform, which will have a lot of stock/photos and will rely a lot on the back end functions and data generating. Java seems to be a good choice, but what other options can I consider that can also be easily scalable as well as a little faster to write?

Thank you

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Replies (2)
Ruslan Rayanov
Recommends

Hi, Kamal! I don't know if your question is still relevant. But I would like to introduce you to our solution, perhaps it will be useful for future projects. We have developed a web application constructor that can be used to create almost any website or application https://falconspace.site/. The entire development stack is reduced to SQL only. The platform is easy to configure and make subsequent changes if necessary.

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Recommends

Firstly, you must know that java and python are both amazing languages. But I recommend python mainly because of the variety of modules and packages available to do almost anything. If you are planning on adding graphs, you can use the matplotlib library and to add photos, use the pillow module. And just note that both of these aren't available by default, so you need to install them through pip.

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Needs advice
on
JavaJavaLuaLua
and
PythonPython

I am trying to make Roblox game which requires Lua. I quite don't want to go with Lua just because other tools just might let me do more projects later on. I heard that Python is most similar to Lua, but I am still not sure which tool to use. Java, I think it will help me with many stuff later on for websites, projects, and more!

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Replies (2)
Rafey Iqbal Rahman
Recommends
on
LuaLua
at

Since you are trying to make a Roblox game, you have no other option than to use Lua, since Roblox only allows coding in Lua. Yes, you've heard right, Python is identical and as easy as Lua, although Lua is easier than Python. Beginning from Lua and then escalating to Python is recommended. Java is only helpful when you are creating a heavy, big-budget, enterprise-level product, otherwise, Python would suffice.

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Recommends
on
TypeScriptTypeScript

If you really hate lua check out roblox-ts, a tool that compiles typescript code into roblox lua. https://github.com/roblox-ts/roblox-ts

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Girish Sharma
Software Engineer at FireVisor Systems · | 6 upvotes · 249.8K views
Needs advice
on
BottleBottleFlaskFlask
and
NamekoNameko

Which is the best Python framework for microservices?

We are using Nameko for building microservices in Python. The things we really like are dependency injection and the ease with which one can expose endpoints via RPC over RabbitMQ. We are planning to try a tool that helps us write polyglot microservices and nameko is not super compatible with it. Also, we are a bit worried about the not so good community support from nameko and looking for a python alternate to write microservices.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
BottleBottle

Bottle is much less bloated and fast. Its built-in templating system is one of the fastest as it compiles the templates in bytecode. Also Bottle has no depenencies, preventing dependency bloat.

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Needs advice
on
JavaJavaPHPPHP
and
PythonPython

Hi everyone, I have just started to study web development, so I'm very new in this field. I would like to ask you which tools are most updated and good to use for getting a job in medium-big company. Front-end is basically not changing by time so much (as I understood by researching some info), so my question is about back-end tools. Which backend tools are most updated and requested by medium-big companies (I am searching for immediate job possibly)?

Thank you in advance Davit

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Replies (4)
Pierrick Martos
Engineering Manager at Akeneo · | 20 upvotes · 290.7K views
Recommends
on
PythonPython

Go with Python definetly. It's used everywhere by web developers for backend developments : API, website backend, workers... but also by data scientists (lot lot of resources, models and libraries in Python it's language #1). For the web parts, best web framework are in Python : https://stackshare.io/microframeworks (Flask #2 and Django #3). Java is good but trend is not great in terms of popularity amongs developers and tech leaders.

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Vijayakumar Rajagopal
Recommends
on
JavaJava

As per my experience java is most wanted for web development as of now. micro service is evolving . with frameworks like spring boot supports rapid development. Spring boot + Docker + kubernetes great combination.

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sharik zama
Software engineering Intern at EPAM Systems · | 5 upvotes · 289.9K views
Recommends
on
JavaScriptJavaScript

I would recommend learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (most important). JavaScript forms the backbone of web development. And, there are many popular and widely used frameworks like Angular and React that heavily rely on the knowledge of JavaScript. The number of job opportunities are much more when it comes to javascript.

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Chathuranga Bandara
Recommends
on
PythonPython

I would recommend Python as the programming language and as you are a new developer, Flask to start with. It gives you a solid understanding on the web patterns such as REST and will get you up and running in no time. However, I suggest you to read and study on front-end technologies like (React or Vue) and databases (SQL and NoSQL) and probably some NodeJS as well. First grasp the concepts (which Python is ideal for) then it does not really matter the language as such.

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Saurav Pandit
Application Devloper at Bny Mellon · | 6 upvotes · 262.6K views

I have just started learning Python 3 weeks ago. I want to create a REST API using python. The API will be used to save form data in an Oracle database. The front end is using AngularJS 8 with Angular Material. In python, there are so many frameworks to develop REST APIs.

I am looking for some suggestions which REST framework to choose?

Here are some features I am looking for:

  • Easy integration and unit testing, like in Angular. We just want to run a command.

  • Code packaging, like in java maven project we can build and package. I am looking for something which I can push in as an artifact and deploy whole code as a package.

  • Support for swagger/ OpenAPI

  • Support for JSON Web Token

  • Support for test case coverage report

Framework can have features included or can be available by extension. Also, you can suggest a framework other than the ones I have mentioned.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
FlaskFlask
at

For starters flask provides a beautiful and easy way to create REST APIs. Also its supported by excellent beginner docs as well as a very active community. Another good thing with Flask is its widely available list of plugins which allow you to build as you go. Its also good in performance and can scale to a quite decent level. However, if you are sure your project is going to be fairly big, it would be better to start with Django as it provides a lot of features out of the box and is extremely stable in performance. Both these frameworks have support for Swagger, JWT, Coverage Report although you have to install plugins for them. Deploying both of these are fairly simple and there is huge documentation available. Django has one of the best documentations I have come across. I hope I was able to answer your queries.

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Decisions about Flask and Java
Noel Broda
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter · | 5 upvotes · 214K views

1 code deploys for both: Android and iOS. There is a huge community behind React Native. And one of the best things is Expo. Expo uses React Native to make everything even more and more simple. Awesome technologies. Some other important thing is that while using React Native, you are reusing all JavaScript knowledge you have in your team. You can move easily a frontend dev to develop mobile applications.

A huge PRO of Expo, is that it includes a full building process. You run 1 line in the terminal, and 10 minutes after you have 2 builds done. Double check EAS Expo.

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Erik Ralston
Chief Architect at LiveTiles · | 14 upvotes · 506.3K views

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

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Brent Maxwell

Node.js has been growing in popularity, and the ability to access the global pool of Javascript developers is great. There is a decreased amount of effort for people to work across the frontend and backend, and the language itself is easy and works well for many common use cases.

Go was the other serious candidate, but it just hasn't been implemented in as many Production systems yet, and the best Go engineers I've known have been hackers, whereas we're building a robust analytics platform that requires more caution. Type safety is easily added with TypeScript, and NPM is awesomely handy.

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Chose
GolangGolang
over
JavaJava

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

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Alaeddin Alzeybek
Head of Engineering at Volt Lines · | 1 upvote · 196.6K views

From cross platform development point of view: Using kotlin multiplatform is more convenient than java for implementing cross platform code, since it can be converted to be used in iOS (swift) projects, and it can be easily learned if you already know swift. It still an experimental feature but it helped so far to unify a lot of the common code between our iOS and Android projects. And it is more future proof than java regarding support and maintain multiplatform converting.

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We needed to incorporate Big Data Framework for data stream analysis, specifically Apache Spark / Apache Storm. The three options of languages were most suitable for the job - Python, Java, Scala.

The winner was Python for the top of the class, high-performance data analysis libraries (NumPy, Pandas) written in C, quick learning curve, quick prototyping allowance, and a great connection with other future tools for machine learning as Tensorflow.

The whole code was shorter & more readable which made it easier to develop and maintain.

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Kyle Harrison
Web Application Developer at Fortinet · | 2 upvotes · 127.2K views

The decision behind choosing a server side technology is never an easy one. Every single language has it's pro's and con's around each.

For me, this decision came down to a couple simple points: 1. Node is a web tech first class citizen, designed around handling web events, in a web technology world 2. Asynchronous

The thing about Python and Java is that they TOO can handle these, and handle these very well. Java for instance powers most of Twitter and Netflix's architecture. Where Python is what's behind giants like Instagram and Patreon. Certainly, you can't go wrong. Heck, Ruby powered GitHub and GitLab, and those things see HUGE traffic.

But this project is a web technology first. And node feels right at home as it itself is a web technology. This decision was more about homogeneous synergy than most anything else. I need it to be screaming fast, asynchronous, and play extremely well with web standards.

Node fits the bill on every front.

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Nick Parsons
Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream · | 11 upvotes · 139.5K views

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

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Pros of Flask
Pros of Java
  • 14
    Flexibilty
  • 13
    Love it
  • 10
    For it flexibility
  • 9
    Flexibilty and easy to use
  • 8
    Flask
  • 7
    User friendly
  • 6
    Secured
  • 5
    Unopinionated
  • 3
    Orm
  • 2
    Secure
  • 1
    Rapid development
  • 1
    Not JS
  • 1
    Beautiful code
  • 1
    Easy to get started
  • 1
    Easy to develop and maintain applications
  • 1
    Easy to setup and get it going
  • 1
    Perfect for small to large projects with superb docs.
  • 1
    Get started quickly
  • 1
    Documentation
  • 1
    Easy to integrate
  • 1
    Python
  • 1
    Minimal
  • 1
    Lightweight
  • 1
    Speed
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Customizable
  • 1
    Simple to use
  • 1
    Powerful
  • 0
    Well designed
  • 0
    Awesome
  • 0
    Productive
  • 0
    Expressive
  • 0
    Open source
  • 596
    Great libraries
  • 444
    Widely used
  • 399
    Excellent tooling
  • 393
    Huge amount of documentation available
  • 333
    Large pool of developers available
  • 206
    Open source
  • 201
    Excellent performance
  • 156
    Great development
  • 149
    Used for android
  • 149
    Vast array of 3rd party libraries
  • 60
    Compiled Language
  • 51
    Used for Web
  • 46
    Managed memory
  • 45
    High Performance
  • 44
    Native threads
  • 43
    Statically typed
  • 35
    Easy to read
  • 33
    Great Community
  • 29
    Reliable platform
  • 24
    Sturdy garbage collection
  • 24
    JVM compatibility
  • 22
    Cross Platform Enterprise Integration
  • 20
    Universal platform
  • 20
    Good amount of APIs
  • 18
    Great Support
  • 14
    Great ecosystem
  • 11
    Lots of boilerplate
  • 11
    Backward compatible
  • 10
    Everywhere
  • 9
    Excellent SDK - JDK
  • 7
    Static typing
  • 7
    Cross-platform
  • 7
    It's Java
  • 6
    Portability
  • 6
    Long term language
  • 6
    Better than Ruby
  • 6
    Mature language thus stable systems
  • 5
    Vast Collections Library
  • 5
    Clojure
  • 5
    Used for Android development
  • 4
    Old tech
  • 4
    Most developers favorite
  • 3
    History
  • 3
    Stable platform, which many new languages depend on
  • 3
    Best martial for design
  • 3
    Great Structure
  • 3
    Javadoc
  • 3
    Testable
  • 2
    Faster than python
  • 2
    Type Safe
  • 0
    Job

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Cons of Flask
Cons of Java
  • 10
    Not JS
  • 7
    Context
  • 5
    Not fast
  • 1
    Don't has many module as in spring
  • 33
    Verbosity
  • 27
    NullpointerException
  • 17
    Nightmare to Write
  • 16
    Overcomplexity is praised in community culture
  • 12
    Boiler plate code
  • 8
    Classpath hell prior to Java 9
  • 6
    No REPL
  • 4
    No property
  • 3
    Code are too long
  • 2
    Non-intuitive generic implementation
  • 2
    There is not optional parameter
  • 2
    Floating-point errors
  • 1
    Java's too statically, stronglly, and strictly typed
  • 1
    Returning Wildcard Types
  • 1
    Terrbible compared to Python/Batch Perormence

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What is Flask?

Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

What is Java?

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

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What companies use Flask?
What companies use Java?
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What are some alternatives to Flask and Java?
Django
Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
Tornado
By using non-blocking network I/O, Tornado can scale to tens of thousands of open connections, making it ideal for long polling, WebSockets, and other applications that require a long-lived connection to each user.
ExpressJS
Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.
Node.js
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
See all alternatives