What is the purpose of Golang?
Over the course of a decade, the programming world has dealt with a number of changes. Among these modifications are challenges that software developers inevitably face, the biggest one being the rise of multicore CPUs. Programming languages should always provide quality support for concurrency. To allow this to happen, a programming language that accommodates some sort of automatic memory management had to be created.
To add to that, the complexity of server software has been increasing rapidly, while the act of programming itself in languages such as C, C++, and Java were not advancing just as much back in the days.
This is why Golang was created. Built with concurrency in mind, Golang does not sacrifice readability and efficiency for its speed.
Why did people bother to create a new programming language?
A number of people were frustrated about the work environments that the different programming languages brought. Technology kept advancing but the act of programming stayed as close to its primitive state.
When people were choosing between which programming languages to use, they were always compelled to choose either efficient compilation, efficient execution, or ease of programming. It was as if no programming language embodied the three altogether. This is why Google, in the hopes of being able to address this problem despite being able to do it imperfectly. Go was created, and it became one of the new programming languages in the 21stcentury. Along with several new programming languages that came with Go, programming was reinvigorated to keep up with the pace of technology.
Is the language called Go or Golang?
The official language is called Go. The moniker “Golang” surfaced because of the domain name of their original website golang.org. Through time, it has been gradually adapted as a catchy moniker and developers have made it handy ever since.
Now, when talking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it appears that Golang has overtaken Go because Golang seemed more specific. Basically, it was easier to find “Golang” on Google as opposed to just “Go”. When developers mention Golang, people already presume that they’re talking about the programming language in which the word “Go” doesn’t completely fulfill on the other hand.
Who are using Go?
Go is widely used for production inside Google, and while it is not the only language used notably by Google, it still serves as a key language for multiple areas including Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and large-scale data processing.
Go is also used in a couple of major cloud infrastructure projects like Docker, Kubernetes, Uber, SoundCloud, Paypal, Dropbox, and Medium among others.
Does Golang link well with C/C++ programs?
While Golang may be linked with C and C++ programs in the same address space, it is not a “natural fit” and may require special interface software. Another thing to note is that linking C with Go would give up the memory safety and stack management properties that Go provides.
If there comes a time that you really need to use both, you may choose to use Go compiler implementation. As of today, there are three compiler implementations that are supported by Go. These are: gc, gccgo, and gollvm. Visit https://go.dev/doc/faq#go_or_golang for a more technical and detailed information.
Why is it called Goroutines instead of threads?
Goroutines are part of making concurrency easy to use. To make the stacks significantly small, Go’s run time makes use of resizable, bounded stacks. This way, not much memory is consumed when it comes to Goroutines. A newly minted goroutine possesses a few kilobytes, which would already suffice.
It is generally easier to create hundreds of thousands of goroutines in the same address space. If they were otherwise done in threads, the memory is bigger and system resources would run out at a faster rate.
Is Go an object-oriented language?
The answer is both yes and no. While Go possesses characteristics that allow for object-oriented style of programming, there is no type hierarchy. The concept of “interface” in Go provides an unusual approach that are to the perspective of some, easy to use. Ways to embed types also exist in other types to provide something analogous but not completely identical to subclassing.
Methods in Go are more general than in C++ or Java: they are capable of being defined for any sort of data and even built-in types such as plain, “unboxed” integers. They are not entirely restricted to classes.
Is Go worth it?
Definitely! Go is among the popular programming languages being used today, and the trend will likely keep going for decades. According to statistics from Github, the Go community has grown by 147% between 2018-2019. Go is worth it because of its capability to code at a fast pace while not sacrificing the readability and simplicity of code. This being said, Go competes well with programming languages such as Python, Java, C, and C+, to name a few.
However, it must be duly noted that no single programming language answers every problem in the world of software development, and there will be many instances that you will be driven to use more than one programming language. Choosing the best programming language may not be possible, let alone use one in the whole progression of your software development career. However, when it comes to choices, Go will definitely deliver!
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