Golang

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   2023-12-02  

Golang, or Go, developed at Google in 2007, has quickly become a go-to language in the software development landscape. Loved by programmers for its simplicity and efficiency, Go has been adopted by some of the largest tech companies across the globe. This article will discover why enterprises are turning to Go with in-depth insights into its benefits, possible drawbacks, costs, potential outcomes, and relevant scientific literature.

The Allure of Golang

The first point of appeal with Golang is its simplicity. Go’s syntax and overall design philosophy intend to reduce the complexity of coding and is inspired by Python’s readability and usability ¹. Go is statically typed and performs automatic garbage collection, further ensuring code safety ².

Go’s performance is another impressive feature that pulls companies toward adaptation. The language offers an optimal balance between performance and ease of programming ³. Go’s inbuilt support for concurrent programming allows for improved utilization of multicore processors, significantly increasing performance and speed ⁴.

Benefits & Practical Applications

The benefits of Go can ultimately be boiled down to three P’s: Productivity, Performance, and Preference.

• Productivity: Go’s simple syntax and clean architecture ensure developers can maintain high productivity levels. It also rewards good programming culture, as it enforces strict typing and package scope, encouraging code reusability ⁵.
• Performance: Go code performance competes with languages like C or C++, which have been lauded for their speed. Furthermore, its built-in support for concurrent process channeling has seen companies like Uber change their highest queries per second (QPS) services from Python and Node.js to Go ⁶.
• Preference: Go has gained significant traction in popularity rankings over recent years, evident in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, where it has been amongst the top 5 ‘most loved’ languages since 2018 ⁷.

Numerous multinational companies have harnessed Go to optimize their technical stack. Google, of course, makes ample usage of Go. Notably, it was used in the development of the popular Docker container platform. Companies such as Uber, Twitch, and Medium have reported improved server efficiency after transitioning to Go ⁸.

Considerations & Drawbacks

While Go offers numerous advantages, no language is without its drawbacks.

One notable shortcoming is lack of a virtual machine (VM), which means Go can’t offer the same level of dynamic features as languages like Python or Ruby. Moreover, some developers might find Go’s strictness limiting – its lack of flexibility and imposing of specific ways to solve problems can be problematic for more advanced programming paradigms.

While Go’s garbage collection is an advantage on one side, it could be a possible source of latency on the other because of pausing problems during execution. It can also cause higher memory utilization.

Lastly, Go lacks GUI library support, which makes it a less attractive choice for developing desktop applications ⁹.

Costs & Achievements

The costs associated with implementing Go are primarily human-related: hiring and training developers well-versed in Go, or upskilling existing developers, which can impact the project timeline. However, these costs are often offset by the increased productivity and performance benefits ¹⁰.

Achievements are measurable in the adoption rate. According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Go has steadily climbed the ranks to become the 5th most popular language, indicating an increasingly available talent pool ¹¹. Additionally, companies adopting Go have reported efficiency improvements. For example, Dropbox migrated some of its critical components from Python to Go, resulting in 3x CPU improvements and reducing memory usage by a factor of 10 ¹².

Conclusion

Although every programming language has its merits and demerits, Go’s balance of simplicity, performance, and broad industry preference make it a solid choice for modern software engineering. While initial human-related costs for adoption may be a factor, the improved performance and productivity often make it a worthwhile investment. As more industry giants turn to Go for their critical solutions, it cements itself as a language to consider for any forward-looking enterprise.

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