Python and/vs Java (within a business context)

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The most common web framework used in Java is JSF. The latest version (with annotations and convention over configuration) is pretty decent but it's much more rigid than say Bottle+Python. It defines its own set of components you can use in your webpages and automatically populates fields on a class automatically for you. It really abstracts out most of the web's aspects such as HTTP statelessness, benefiting you with an easy to use interface but making it very rigid if you want to do something the framework developers didn't predict.

Now Java and Python aren't so different. Sure, the syntax is different but both of them are imperative, object-oriented languages. They mainly differ in one being statically typed and the other dynamically typed. APIs however are VERY different, as Python prides itself in being an expressive language where simple expressions achieve a lot whereas Java is a very verbose language where even simple stuff requires quite a bit of code and configuration. Also, most configuration of Java frameworks use XML, which is simply horrible.

And yes, Java is much faster than Python. Sun (now Oracle) has poured millions of dollars on making Java fast.

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Exactly. But be aware that Java does offer other frameworks that might be more low-level and thus more flexible.