Why Developers should consider using Golang for web development project?
Web app development has always been one of the most required service for businesses. For many businesses, sometimes, their web applications were built without taking into account the scalability requirement in the first place. As their businesses grow, it becomes a challenge for such applications to handle the larger number of requests and heavier loads. With the growing availability of technologies and advanced tools, scalability requirements can be now addressed by incorporating those advanced technologies into the development project.
In the recent years, Golang programming language (or “Go”) has emerged as one of the game changing programming languages embraced by developers for many of their software development projects. Many companies such as Google, Uber, Pinterest, Twitch, Docker etc. have already embraced and adopted Golang for their development purpose.
Compared to C and C++ which are already established programming language, Golang is still really young. So, what are the benefits Golang can bring to your development project? In this article, we take a look into Go’s features and see what it has to offer:
Open-source
Golang is open source by nature and this is important as it helps business to save on licensing fees with a lower software costs as well as having a large community helping to develop Golang programming language to become better and more efficient.
It’s also worth mentioning that Go was created and financed by Google. Its creators are Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson who are the same people contributed to the development of other important technologies such as C, UNIX, JVM, and others.
Compiled language
Golang is a compile language which is known for their speed. Here, the codes which Golang developers wrote are converted directly into machine-level code instead of being interpreted. This makes Golang really fast (and faster than a number of other popular programming languages).
Besides, the Go compiler also provides additional benefits such as error checking, ease of deployment and allowing code written by Go developers to be optimized for efficiency.
Cross-platform
Golang can be used for development on various platforms including: Windows, Linux, UNIX, and BSD versions, as well as mobile. Go also compiles well on many OS(s).
Concurrency
One of the important benefits offered by Go is concurrency, which allows multiple process to run simultaneously and efficiently. Go can manage concurrency easily thanks to its features such as Goroutines, channels, and garbage collection.
(Goroutines are functions or methods that are capable of running concurrently with others.)
Garbage collector
Garbage collection, or automatic memory management, is one of the key features of Go programming language. This helps make concurrency more efficient and provide improvement on program performance.
Cross-platform compiling
Another great feature provides by Golang is cross-platform compiling which allows the application to operate on a different machine than the one in the development environment. With this, developers only have to create one executable file after compilation without any dependency, so they can deploy it anywhere and run it. This makes deploying Go applications to production environment or local machines easier and faster, helping Go developers save time and speed up the process.
Scalability
Once a business grows, the application needs to handle more requests with the requirement of handling many smaller sub-tasks concurrently. As mentioned above, Go can help developers to meet the requirement of scalability and fast performance. Go has the built-in features to effectively enable the handling of concurrency such as Goroutines and channels.
Simplicity
Last but not least, Golang is amazing in the way of being simple and easy to understand. Go makes it easy for developers to both read and write the code.
There are many resources for developers to study and improve their skills with Go, most notably:
(The official Go website provides tutorial to those who just get started as well as official guidelines, tools, and tips)
But, Go also has some disadvantages:
Similar to other programming languages, Golang has its advantages as well as disadvantages. Some of its disadvantages include: lack of third party modules (as compared to other ecosystem), strict rules, and no generic support.
However, all in all, Golang is a great programming language, incorporating many best features of the most popular languages.
Is Go the right selection for my web development project?
Depending on the specific requirements (e.g. size, scope etc.) of the applications, Go could be the best suitable solution for your web development project. Golang’s significant advantages such as fast processing, concurrency support, and optimal memory management make it the right choice of back-end technology for many businesses to build fast and scalable applications.
Side-notes:
Looking to build your next software product with Go Programming? Contact us today, our team of experienced developers are ready to help put your idea into life.
