Hack vs JavaScript vs Python

Overview

Python

Stacks262.9K

Followers205.4K

Votes6.9K

GitHub Stars69.7K

Forks33.3K

Hack

Stacks818

Followers169

Votes29

GitHub Stars18.5K

Forks3.1K

JavaScript

Stacks392.3K

Followers284.0K

Votes8.1K

Hack vs JavaScript vs Python: What are the differences?

Introduction: When it comes to programming languages, each one has its own unique features and capabilities. Hack, JavaScript, and Python are all popular languages used for different purposes, and understanding their key differences can help developers choose the right tool for their projects.

Type System: Hack is a statically typed language, meaning that variable types are explicitly declared at compile time, which can help catch errors early in the development process. JavaScript and Python, on the other hand, are dynamically typed languages, where types are determined at runtime, offering more flexibility but potentially leading to more errors.
Syntax: Hack's syntax is more similar to PHP, as it was initially developed as a dialect of PHP. JavaScript has a C-style syntax, while Python has a clean and readable syntax that emphasizes code readability and explicitness.
Tooling and Libraries: Hack was developed by Facebook and is mainly used for backend development, with a focus on scalability and performance. JavaScript is widely used for frontend web development, with frameworks like React and Angular, as well as for server-side development with Node.js. Python has a strong emphasis on simplicity and readability, with a vast ecosystem of libraries for various applications, including data science and machine learning.
Concurrency and Parallelism: Hack has built-in support for asynchronous programming through async and await keywords, making it suitable for handling concurrent operations efficiently. JavaScript also supports asynchronous programming through promises and async/await, but it lacks low-level support for concurrency. Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) limits the ability to achieve true parallelism in multi-threaded applications, making it less suited for high-performance tasks that require parallel processing.
Community and Adoption: JavaScript has a large and active community, with a wide range of resources and support available. Python is also popular among developers, particularly in the fields of data science and machine learning, with a strong community and extensive documentation. Hack, while not as widely adopted as JavaScript and Python, has gained popularity in the web development community due to its enhanced type safety and performance optimizations.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between Hack, JavaScript, and Python in terms of type system, syntax, tooling, concurrency, community, and adoption can help developers choose the right language for their specific project requirements.

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Detailed Comparison

Python	Hack	JavaScript
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.	Hack provides instantaneous type checking via a local server that watches the filesystem. It typically runs in less than 200 milliseconds, making it easy to integrate into your development workflow without introducing a noticeable delay.	JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
-	Fast Development; Type Checking; Built for HHVM; Type Annotations; Generics; Lambdas	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 69.7K	GitHub Stars 18.5K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 33.3K	GitHub Forks 3.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 262.9K	Stacks 818	Stacks 392.3K
Followers 205.4K	Followers 169	Followers 284.0K
Votes 6.9K	Votes 29	Votes 8.1K
Pros & Cons
Pros 1186 Great libraries 966 Readable code 848 Beautiful code 789 Rapid development 692 Large community Cons 53 Still divided between python 2 and python 3 28 Performance impact 26 Poor syntax for anonymous functions 22 GIL 20 Package management is a mess	Pros 6 Open source 6 Interoperates seamlessly with php 5 Backed by facebook 4 HHVM 2 Generics	Pros 1671 Can be used on frontend/backend 1497 It's everywhere 1163 Lots of great frameworks 899 Fast 746 Light weight Cons 24 A constant moving target, too much churn 20 Horribly inconsistent 16 Javascript is the New PHP 9 No ability to monitor memory utilitization 8 Shows Zero output in case of ANY error
Integrations
Django	HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine)	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Python, Hack, JavaScript?

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

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!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Rust

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

Related Comparisons

Hack vs JavaScript vs Python: What are the differences?

Type System: Hack is a statically typed language, meaning that variable types are explicitly declared at compile time, which can help catch errors early in the development process. JavaScript and Python, on the other hand, are dynamically typed languages, where types are determined at runtime, offering more flexibility but potentially leading to more errors.
Syntax: Hack's syntax is more similar to PHP, as it was initially developed as a dialect of PHP. JavaScript has a C-style syntax, while Python has a clean and readable syntax that emphasizes code readability and explicitness.
Tooling and Libraries: Hack was developed by Facebook and is mainly used for backend development, with a focus on scalability and performance. JavaScript is widely used for frontend web development, with frameworks like React and Angular, as well as for server-side development with Node.js. Python has a strong emphasis on simplicity and readability, with a vast ecosystem of libraries for various applications, including data science and machine learning.
Concurrency and Parallelism: Hack has built-in support for asynchronous programming through async and await keywords, making it suitable for handling concurrent operations efficiently. JavaScript also supports asynchronous programming through promises and async/await, but it lacks low-level support for concurrency. Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) limits the ability to achieve true parallelism in multi-threaded applications, making it less suited for high-performance tasks that require parallel processing.
Community and Adoption: JavaScript has a large and active community, with a wide range of resources and support available. Python is also popular among developers, particularly in the fields of data science and machine learning, with a strong community and extensive documentation. Hack, while not as widely adopted as JavaScript and Python, has gained popularity in the web development community due to its enhanced type safety and performance optimizations.

Hack vs JavaScript vs Python

Overview