Did you know that Go is a highly valued technology for web and mobile development? In this article, we explain the utilities, features, pros and cons of the Go programming language. Read on and find out how it can help you.
What is Go and what is it for?
Go, also known as Golang, is a programming language developed by Google. It is characterized by its simplicity and efficiency, and is used to develop a wide variety of applications, from command line programs to distributed systems and high-scale web applications.
Being an efficient language, Go is suitable for building applications that need to handle a high volume of concurrent requests. In addition, its design emphasizes safety and error prevention.
In recent years, Golang has gained a lot of strength. Large companies trust it, including: Dropbox, Docker, Facebook, Netflix, Uber and Twitter. You can check the list of companies around the world that are currently using Golang here.
Go is a versatile programming language that allows you to create applications efficiently and safely, ranging from small projects to complex systems.
Go features
- Simplicity. This language has a clear, clean and organized syntax.
- Easy to use. Go is designed to make life as easy as possible for developers.
- Compatibility. As many other languages, it is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD systems.
- Open Source. It allows external users to develop new programs and libraries using it.
- Compiled language. Its source code is compiled to generate machine code to run the program.
These features make Go a popular and widely used programming language, especially in the development of web applications, backend services, distributed systems, and command line programs.
Advantages or strengths
- It is a concurrent language that supports CSP communication channels.
- It has a garbage collector that allows you to maximize efficiency and performance, while minimizing latency.
- It has a clear and concise syntax. It also avoids the explicit declaration of variables.
- It is an innovative language, which takes the best of modern languages to give life to an efficient, clear and simple language.
- It has an active community of developers who contribute libraries, tools, and resources. This provides good support for developers.
- It is suitable for building scalable systems that handle large volumes of concurrent requests. Its focus on concurrency and efficiency makes it ideal for applications that need to scale out.
- It places a strong emphasis on security and error prevention. The compiler performs extensive static checks at compile time, which helps catch many common errors before the app execution.
- It facilitates maintenance and collaboration on long-term development projects. Go code tends to be easier to understand and maintain, and this can reduce development costs over the life cycle of an application.
- It comes with a rich and comprehensive standard library that provides a wide range of functionality, allowing you to build applications without having to rely heavily on external libraries.
Disadvantages or weaknesses
- It is still a young language compared to other more established languages. This means that there may be areas where the community is still developing best practices and standard solutions.
- In some specific domains there may be a lack of mature and widely adopted libraries compared to other more established languages. This may require more effort and time to implement specific functionality.
- Manual memory management may be required in certain scenarios to optimize performance. This may require increased attention and knowledge on the part of the developer.
- Go uses composition instead of class inheritance. While this can promote a more flexible and modular design, it can be challenging for those used to a more traditional inheritance paradigm.
- Use debugging as a common way to handle exceptional situations. Although this can simplify the flow of control in some cases, it can be less intuitive for those used to traditional exception handling mechanisms.
- It may not be the best option for all use cases. For example, if high mathematical computational ability or manipulation of complex scientific data is required, other specialized languages might be more appropriate.
What is the difference between C and Go?
Although knowing C can help simplify the Go learning curve because of the similarities between them, there are several notable differences between these two programming languages. Here we mention what they are:
- Go is object oriented, while C is not.
- Go statements are done the other way around than in C, to make it much easier to read and interpret.
- Go does not use pointer arithmetic like in C. This makes it a much safer language.
- Placing a semicolon at the end of the code is optional in Go.
- In Go, the + and – signs are not expressions.
In short, you should know that Go can be a good option to develop technological projects, both web and mobile. At MyTaskPanel Consulting, we have experts in this and other languages. If you want to know more, do not hesitate to contact us at contact@mytaskpanel.com.
