What is the Go programming language (Golang) really great for?

All through its decade-additionally decades in the wild, Google’s Go language, aka Golang—with edition 1.18 out as of March 2022—has progressed from staying a curiosity for alpha geeks to being the battle-analyzed programming language behind some of the world’s most significant cloud-centric projects. 

Why was Go picked by the builders of such tasks as Docker and Kubernetes? What are Go’s defining qualities, how does it vary from other programming languages, and what types of projects is it most acceptable for making? In this posting, we’ll examine Go’s feature established, the optimum use cases, the language’s omissions and constraints, and where by Go may possibly be likely from here.

Go language is modest and simple

Go, or Golang as it is usually called, was produced by Google employees—chiefly longtime Unix expert and Google distinguished engineer Rob Pike—but it’s not strictly talking a “Google task.” Relatively, Go is designed as a local community-led open up resource undertaking, spearheaded by leadership that has solid viewpoints about how Go should really be utilized and the direction the language must get.

Go is intended to be simple to understand, clear-cut to function with, and effortless to go through by other builders. Go does not have a big element set, particularly when as opposed to languages like C++. Go is reminiscent of C in its syntax, creating it comparatively uncomplicated for longtime C developers to learn. That said, quite a few attributes of Go, especially its concurrency and functional programming attributes, harken again to languages this kind of as Erlang.

As a C-like language for making and keeping cross-system enterprise applications of all kinds, Go has significantly in frequent with Java. And as a suggests of enabling quick growth of code that may possibly run anyplace, you could attract a parallel in between Go and Python, while the variations are far higher than the similarities.

Go language has some thing for absolutely everyone

The Go documentation describes Go as “a speedy, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.” Even a massive Go plan will compile in a make any difference of seconds. As well as, Go avoids substantially of the overhead of C-type incorporate files and libraries.

Go tends to make the developer’s existence simple in a quantity of approaches.

Go is convenient

Go has been compared to scripting languages like Python in its potential to satisfy several popular programming requirements. Some of this operation is constructed into the language itself, these kinds of as “goroutines” for concurrency and threadlike conduct, though extra capabilities are obtainable in Go regular library deals, like Go’s http deal. Like Python, Go delivers automated memory administration abilities which includes rubbish assortment.
In contrast to scripting languages this kind of as Python, Go code compiles to a quick-working indigenous binary. And in contrast to C or C++, Go compiles really fast—fast sufficient to make working with Go really feel extra like doing work with a scripting language than a compiled language. Further, the Go establish technique is significantly less complex than individuals of other compiled languages. It will take number of techniques and minimal bookkeeping to build and operate a Go task.

Go is speedy

Go binaries run additional slowly than their C counterparts, but the change in speed is negligible for most apps. Go general performance is as fantastic as C for the huge the greater part of work, and commonly considerably a lot quicker than other languages identified for speed of progress (e.g., JavaScript, Python, and Ruby).

Go is portable

Executables made with the Go toolchain can stand by yourself, with no default exterior dependencies. The Go toolchain is offered for a broad selection of functioning units and hardware platforms, and can be utilised to compile binaries across platforms.

Go is interoperable

Go delivers all of the over with no sacrificing entry to the fundamental process. Go plans can discuss to external C libraries or make indigenous procedure calls. In Docker, for instance, Go interfaces with small-stage Linux features, cgroups, and namespaces, to operate container magic.

Go is commonly supported

The Go toolchain is freely accessible as a Linux, MacOS, or Windows binary or as a Docker container. Go is involved by default in lots of preferred Linux distributions, these types of as Crimson Hat Organization Linux and Fedora, generating it to some degree much easier to deploy Go supply to these platforms. Assistance for Go is also solid throughout many 3rd-get together improvement environments, from Microsoft Visible Studio Code to ActiveState’s Komodo IDE.

Where Go language functions most effective

No language is suited to each and every occupation, but some languages are suited to additional careers than other individuals.

Go shines brightest for establishing the following application types.

Cloud-native progress

Go’s concurrency and networking features, and its significant diploma of portability, make it perfectly-suited for developing cloud-native apps. In actuality, Go was made use of to make numerous cornerstones of cloud-native computing such as Docker, Kubernetes, and Istio.

Distributed community services

Community programs reside and die by concurrency, and Go’s indigenous concurrency features—goroutines and channels, mainly—are properly suited for these types of operate. Consequently, quite a few Go tasks are for networking, distributed functions, and cloud providers: APIs, world wide web servers, minimum frameworks for world wide web applications, and the like.

Utilities and stand-by yourself resources

Go applications compile to binaries with minimum external dependencies. That makes them ideally suited to developing utilities and other tooling, simply because they start speedily and can be readily packaged up for redistribution. 1 instance is an accessibility server termed Teleport (for SSH, among the other items). Teleport can be deployed on servers quickly and quickly by compiling it from supply or downloading a prebuilt binary.

Go language constraints

Go’s opinionated set of characteristics has drawn both equally praise and criticism. Go is developed to err on the facet of remaining tiny and easy to comprehend, with selected characteristics intentionally omitted. The result is that some functions that are commonplace in other languages just aren’t offered in Go—on objective.

Just one longstanding criticism was the lack of generic functions, which allow for a perform to accept many various forms of variables. For lots of several years, Go’s advancement team held out in opposition to introducing generics to the language, on the grounds that they required a syntax and set of behaviors that complemented the relaxation of Go. But as of Go 1.18, launched in early 2022, the language now incorporates a syntax for generics. The lesson to be drawn is that Go adds significant characteristics almost never and only after much thing to consider, the superior to preserve broad compatibility across versions.

An additional possible downside to Go is the dimension of the generated binaries. Go binaries are statically compiled by default, this means that every thing wanted at runtime is involved in the binary impression. This strategy simplifies the build and deployment process, but at the value of a very simple “Hello, entire world!” weighing in at around 1.5MB on 64-bit Home windows. The Go workforce has been operating to lower the dimension of those binaries with each and every successive launch. It is also possible to shrink Go binaries with compression or by eradicating Go’s debug information. This very last choice may work greater for stand-on your own distributed applications than for cloud or network solutions, wherever owning debug data is practical if a assistance fails in put.

But a further touted function of Go, automatic memory administration, can be viewed as a disadvantage, as rubbish assortment requires a particular total of processing overhead. By structure, Go doesn’t present manual memory management, and rubbish selection in Go has been criticized for not dealing properly with the varieties of memory loads that show up in company applications.

That claimed, every single new edition of Go would seem to boost the memory management functions. For instance, Go 1.8 introduced substantially shorter lag times for garbage collection. Go developers do have the ability to use guide memory allocation in a C extension, or by way of a third-celebration manual memory administration library, but most Go developers favor indigenous options to these difficulties.

The culture of program all over building abundant GUIs for Go apps, these types of as all those in desktop applications, is however scattered.

Most Go applications are command-line equipment or network providers. That stated, many jobs are working to carry rich GUIs for Go apps. There are bindings for the GTK and GTK3 frameworks. One more project is supposed to provide platform-native UIs, although these rely on C bindings and are not created in pure Go. And Windows customers can check out out walk. But no very clear winner or safe and sound lengthy-term wager has emerged in this area, and some tasks, these types of as a Google endeavor to develop a cross-platform GUI library, have long gone by the wayside. Also, simply because Go is platform-impartial by design and style, it’s not likely any of these will grow to be a component of the standard deal set.

Even though Go can communicate to indigenous procedure features, it was not intended for generating very low-level program elements, such as kernels or device drivers, or embedded units. Right after all, the Go runtime and the garbage collector for Go programs are dependent on the fundamental OS. (Developers fascinated in a chopping-edge language for that variety of function may appear into the Rust language.)

Go language futures

Go’s future improvement is turning far more towards the desires and demands of its developer base, with Go’s minders altering the language to much better accommodate this viewers, somewhat than top by stubborn case in point. A circumstance in position is generics, last but not least included to the language right after substantially deliberation about the finest way to do so.

The 2021 Go Developer Survey found Go buyers have been on the entire joyful with what the language delivers, but also cited loads of space for improvement. Top spots in which Go people desired improvements were dependency management (a regular challenge in Go), diagnosing bugs, and reliability, with challenges like memory, CPU use, binary dimensions, and establish instances position substantially lower.

Most languages gravitate to a core set of use situations. In the 10 years Go has been all around, its area of interest has become network services, where by it’s probably to continue increasing its maintain. By and substantial, the major use situation cited for the language was generating APIs or RPC services (49%), followed by details processing (10%), web companies (10%), and CLI purposes (8%).

A different indication of the Go language’s escalating charm is how many developers opt for it right after assessing it. 75% of those polled who viewed as utilizing Go for a task chose the language. Of all those who didn’t pick Go, Rust (25%), Python (17%), and Java (12%) have been the top rated alternatives. Each of all those languages has observed, or is discovering, other niches: Rust for secure and speedy systems programming Python for prototyping, automation, and glue code and Java for long-standing organization purposes.

It remains to be viewed how significantly Go’s velocity and progress simplicity will get it into other use instances, or how deeply Go will penetrate enterprise growth. But Go’s future as a important programming language is currently assured—certainly in the cloud, exactly where the velocity and simplicity of Go ease the development of scalable infrastructure that can be managed in the lengthy operate.