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  5. Java vs JavaScript vs Swift

Java vs JavaScript vs Swift

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Java
Java
Stacks148.0K
Followers105.5K
Votes3.7K
Swift
Swift
Stacks21.9K
Followers13.6K
Votes1.3K
JavaScript
JavaScript
Stacks392.3K
Followers284.0K
Votes8.1K

Java vs JavaScript vs Swift: What are the differences?

# Introduction
Exploring the key differences between Java, JavaScript, and Swift can help developers understand the unique characteristics of each language and make informed decisions when choosing the right tool for their projects.

1. **Syntax**: Java is a statically typed language, which means data types are explicitly declared, whereas JavaScript is dynamically typed, allowing variables to hold different data types. Swift, like Java, is statically typed but introduces type inference to reduce the verbosity of code.
2. **Platform**: Java is primarily used for backend development, desktop applications, and Android app development. JavaScript is mainly used for front-end web development, while Swift is exclusive to Apple platforms for iOS and macOS app development.
3. **Concurrency**: Java supports multi-threading, enabling concurrent programming, while JavaScript is single-threaded, making asynchronous operations critical for performance. Swift implements asynchronous programming with features like async/await.
4. **Object-Oriented Programming**: Both Java and Swift follow the object-oriented programming paradigm, allowing developers to create classes and objects. JavaScript initially lacked class-based inheritance but introduced the class keyword in ES6 for achieving object-oriented principles.
5. **Tooling and Ecosystem**: Java has a mature ecosystem with various libraries and tools, including IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. JavaScript has a vast ecosystem with frameworks like React and Node.js. Swift, being Apple's language, has a tightly integrated ecosystem with Xcode as the primary IDE.
6. **Garbage Collection**: Java and Swift utilize garbage collection for memory management, while JavaScript relies on automatic memory management through garbage collection but can lead to memory leaks if not handled properly.

In Summary, understanding the nuances of syntax, platform compatibility, concurrency models, programming paradigms, tooling, and memory management is crucial when comparing Java, JavaScript, and Swift for different software development projects.

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Advice on Java, Swift, JavaScript

Nick
Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

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!

176k views176k
Comments
Ido
Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

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.

267k views267k
Comments
Mike
Mike

Enterprise Architect at Warby Parker

Dec 22, 2019

Decided

When I was evaluating languages to write this app in, I considered either Python or JavaScript at the time. I find Ruby very pleasant to read and write, and the Ruby community has built out a wide variety of test tools and approaches, helping e deliver better software faster. Along with Rails, and the Ruby-first Heroku support, this was an easy decision.

258k views258k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Java
Java
Swift
Swift
JavaScript
JavaScript

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!

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.

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.

Statistics
Stacks
148.0K
Stacks
21.9K
Stacks
392.3K
Followers
105.5K
Followers
13.6K
Followers
284.0K
Votes
3.7K
Votes
1.3K
Votes
8.1K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 608
    Great libraries
  • 446
    Widely used
  • 401
    Excellent tooling
  • 396
    Huge amount of documentation available
  • 334
    Large pool of developers available
Cons
  • 33
    Verbosity
  • 27
    NullpointerException
  • 17
    Nightmare to Write
  • 16
    Overcomplexity is praised in community culture
  • 12
    Boiler plate code
Pros
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
Cons
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Very irritatingly picky about things that’s
  • 1
    Complicated process for exporting modules
  • 1
    Is a lot more effort than lua to make simple functions
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
Spring
Spring
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Java, Swift, JavaScript?

Python

Python

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.

PHP

PHP

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

Ruby

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.

Golang

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

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#

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

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

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.

Rust

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.

Clojure

Clojure

Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.

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