starteleDespite its young age, Golang has managed to establish itself as a top-notch programming language. It holds its own against giants like Java and Python, and even surpasses them in some aspects. When Go was conceived at Google, its creators, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson, wanted to create a language that was easy-to-use, efficient, and adhered to modern computing technologies.
So far, Golang has lived up to its reputation and continues to build a strong community. Applications built using Golang are fast, powerful, and dynamic. More and more companies across a spectrum of industries are inclining towards the language for various projects because the results are there to be seen.
Why the love for Go
Go has many qualities that make it a preferred programming language amongst developers or Gophers, as they like to call themselves. It’s open-sourced, easy to learn, is statically typed like C/C++, and has a simple design to work with. What this means for many companies is that code can be written with greater efficiency when using Go.
Apart from that, Go has many more features that help its cause as a well-rated language.
Scalability
One of the most standout features of Go is the use of Goroutines instead of threads. Goroutines work independently and simultaneously with other Goroutines in the application, also known as concurrency. What this does is allows the CPU to run multiple functions across the entire code at the same time.
Thanks to Goroutines, an application written in GO can be grown or shrunk in pretty much any direction as per the requirement of the business. There’s also greater room for adding third-party plugins without changing things too much.
Compiles in seconds
Unlike languages that are interpreted or have a virtual runtime, Go is compiled to machine code. Its simple and minimalistic design makes it inherently lightning fast and the executable code is worth a few megabytes.
Another reason that factors into Go’s speed is the language makes dependency analysis very easy. It avoids parsing overheads as opposed to what is done in C and C++ and even eliminates unused dependencies. Not to forget the lack of need for symbol table. Symbol tables are slow and add an extra step in parsing. Go can be parsed without it, which further adds to its speed.
Cloud compatibility
Golang is a programming language of the new age with an affiliation to modern tech, and it shows. It is a great language that supports cloud computing mostly because of the Goroutines. Since expandability, concurrency, and low memory are important in making a cloud application successful, Golang is ideal for cloud computation.
Safe and reliable
The testing and code analysis in Go is an extremely helpful tool in creating bug-free code. It detects entire classes of bugs in one go, which helps developers fix the code with relative ease. Go also has two impressive in-built tools which contribute to an app’s sturdiness.
First, a code analysis tool called Golint. It scans and understands the code written so far and helps maintain a certain standard of the code. The other is the Garbage Collector tool. It, quite literally, collects unused or excess code as garbage and dumps it, creating a smaller file with higher quality code. The result is a smoother-running app that has little to no flaws.
Companies that trust Go
Go is such a versatile language, that it constantly finds itself employed in so many different industries. From tech and data science to finance and healthcare, Go is used for a number of functions.
A better showcase would be by breaking down Golang clients by their sector.
Tech companies
- Multiple uses at Google
- Backend applications at Dropbox
- Power Azure services at Microsoft
Social media
- Entity framework at Facebook
- Billions of real-time sessions per day at Twitter
E-commerce
- PouchContainer at Alibaba
- Fast cache services at Allegro
E-booking apps
- Scalability at Trivago
- Real-time data analytics at Uber
- Mobility products at SIXT
Streaming services
- Reducing latency at Twitch
- Application data caching at Netflix
- Major functions at Soundcloud
Finance
- Payments and rewards at American Express
- Serverless endpoints at Capitol One
- Microservice architecture at Monzo
- Modernity and scalability at PayPal
Gaming
- Game development and operations at Riot Games
- Backend systems at Wildlife Studios
Best uses for Go
Even though Go is a “one-stop solution” for many computing problems, it was created to perfect backend applications. According to Go Developer Survey 2020, building API/RPC services, CLIs, libraries and frameworks, web services, and automation/scripts remain the most common uses for the language. Go is also a brilliant tool for building server-side programming and large, complex projects that are light but powerful in nature.
Go is proving to be the future of software development, given its rating among the development community and those who use it. With the increased use of cloud, IoT, and machine learning/AI on the horizon, it looks like Go is going to be the go-to language for many applications.