Consider GoLang For Your Next Project

Why should Golang be used by engineering teams after spending years sticking to mainstream programming languages? This is one of the buzzing questions posed, as the decade-old vocabulary of programming is becoming more popular among developers.

GoLang is currently leading in the list of “languages to learn” amongst programmers according to a survey conducted by HackerEarth. 

The transition to a new programming language requires time, training, and probably the rehiring of language-savvy programmers. It also involves discarding much of the work done on old platforms.

With internet bandwidth increasingly growing over the years, companies are pressurized to create faster and more responsive app experiences. Go was propelled to the spotlight with hopes of developing exponentially quicker applications in the era of multicore processors and high-speed broadband Internet. 

 

Why you should consider using GoLang for your next project

Go was built based on the C language instead of creating it from scratch. Golang inherits C’s disciplined syntax, but with some modifications and feature improvements that enable memory to be safely handled by developers. This helps to eliminate the infamous memory leakage problems when unused memory is not released by programmers by accident.

The Go language guarantees code efficiency, which for companies translates into faster applications and software. Golang has been embraced by organizations that understand the need for a lean and productive language. Some noteworthy businesses that have done so are Google, Apple, Facebook, Docker, The New York Times and, BBC.

Scalability

Go was created with scalability in mind as it was developed by Google. They needed to maintain several smaller sub-tasks at the same time as application development, such as distributing HTML pages to individual web browsers. Inside an application, performing simultaneous tasks is considered concurrent. Go has several built-in functions, most importantly goroutines and channels, designed to manage the concurrency.

Concurrency model

In order to operate and take advantage of present and future multiprocessors, executing programs at the same time is the main barrier every modern application faces. The interacting sequential processes (CSP) model (aka the Actor Model) that Erlang has successfully used was implemented by the Go programming language. To form a simple, efficient concurrency model, Go combines light-weight green threads (called goroutines) with communication pipelines called channels. This helps thousands of actors to run an application, without the strain of having to keep the shared memory free of manipulation.

Goroutines are functions capable of running with other functions simultaneously. To decide how best to complete a mission, channels allow various goroutines to communicate with each other.

Garbage collection

A main function of the Go language is the collection of garbage or automated memory management. In the updated versions of the garbage collector, with average latencies below 1ms, Go succeeds in offering a lot of power over memory distribution and has significantly reduced latency. Go’s garbage collector does this by running simultaneously with the program and using a tricolor mark-and-sweep algorithm.

 

What are the cons of using GoLang?

• With not many libraries or data, it’s a relatively new language. 
• Due to its internal inconsistencies, its simplicity seems superficial. 
• Automation may invite mistakes with limited scope. 
• It has defective dependency control. 
• It is a high-level language with low-level features.

 

When should you use GoLang?

• Go would be the best choice when you’re building a distributed infrastructure on a wide scale, where you need to construct microservices to scale the system. Netflix, which is rapidly growing its service internationally, has rewritten Go’s Rend service, which is responsible for link management. Uber has also utilized Golang ‘s effectiveness to ramp up its geofence microservice, which improves the speed of service delivery.
• During web and mobile development – If you want to provide on-demand services or extend your current business with e-commerce functionality, migrating to Golang is a smart move. You’ll escape the speed-constraint that thread-based programming languages frequently encounter by selecting Go.
• Using an application that has a large volume of traffic. The bottom line of transitioning to Golang is that it has to be done if you’re expecting an increase in service demands that would crash current infrastructure power. For companies with predictable development, Golang is good and is based on fast server responses.

 

Late-stage startups with rising customers will typically face difficulties when the backend is unable to deal with the scale of operations. The support of Golang for concurrency functions and limited memory footprint means it is a perfect fit for backend developments where heavy requests need to be dealt with by servers.

It’s been a while since a new programming language has excited the developer community. GoLang is designed to be beneficial to businesses in varying industries. Switching to GoLang can be decisive in shaping your software strategy and delivery for the near future. For further questions on this, reach out to us for a free consultation.