Why you Should Learn Golang?

Introduction

Golang is a general-purpose language developed by Google. It has a very simple and easy-to-learn syntax with minimalistic features. It is a statically typed and garbage-collected language. Golang support multiple programming styles like 'functional programming' and 'Procedural programming.  

A Brief History Of GO

Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson are the creator of Golang. They started working on Golang out of frustration with the undue complexity required by programming languages like C, C++, and Java. To overcome problems related to this programming language they created Go. Go became a public open-source project on November 10, 2009, and Version one of Golang was released in 2012.

The Advantages Of The Language

• Fast compilation and execution:  Golang is a compiled language, meaning the written code is directly translated into machine-level binaries. This makes Golang achieve faster compilation and execution. 
• Readability:  The Syntax used in Golang is straightforward to learn and write. 
• General-purpose language:  Golang is a versatile open-source programming language. It can be used to create a wide range of applications for CLI, Webservers, Networking, etc.
• Static Typing:  Golang is a statically typed language, When you compile the code into executable binaries before development, It does not require any runtime interpretation like Python or JavaScript.
• Does not impose Object-Oriented Design:  Although Golang has types and methods and allows an object-oriented style of programming, It's not mandatory to create any structs or methods to run an application.
• Concurrency:  The Golang has Goroutines inbuilt for all thing concurrency, these are basic functions that can run simultaneously and independently of each other.
• Great garbage collection:  Golang is a garbage-collected language, Which means memory management is taken care of by Golang itself. Golang developers need not care about where these values are stored and how.

Is Golang Popular Among Big Companies?

The answer to this is a big YES. Even though it is a fairly young language, due to features like concurrency, simplicity, faster build time, and efficiency. It's been used by companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, Netflix, Paypal, Salesforce, Uber and the list goes on and on. you can visit the use cases on the golang website to get more details.

Below are a few use cases that show what golang is being used for in different companies;

• Google

  Google's Core Data Solutions is written in Golang.  Chrome Content Optimization Service Runs on Golang.

• Uber

  Uber's GPU-Powered Real-time Analytics Engine(AresDB) was developed using Golang.  

• Netflix 

  Application data caching using SSDs

Top Reasons Why You Should Learn Golang

• Simplicity: Easy to learn

  Golang syntax is very similar to C-language, Hence it's very easy to learn and implement. Golang has the principle of having a minimalistic feature set and avoiding features that create duplication. This reduces the learning curve of the developer improving their hold on the language. Apart from this, there is a lot of official documentation and community support to understand any Golang concept from scratch. As the syntax of Golang is similar to C-language, C-style or Java programmers learn the language with minimum hiccups.   

• Concurrency

  Concurrency is a program's ability to run more than one task independently at a given time. In a concurrent program, several tasks can run at the same time in no particular order, which communicates, share resources, and interact with each other.

  While developing Golang its creator made concurrency an important feature of Golang, As the use of Multicore processors was common. Creating a multithreaded application with other programming languages like Java, Python, etc. was difficult and tend to face issues like deadlocks, race conditions, poor thread performance, and thread-locking.

  To overcome the issues Golang creators come up with the concept of goroutines, This is lightweight threads that are managed by Go runtime. A goroutine is a function that executes simultaneously with other goroutines in a program and is a lightweight thread managed by Go.    

• Standard Libraries

  Libraries are core components of any modern programming language. Go Standard libraries are a set of packages and programs providing a core language feature. This help in redundant tasks like logging, handling of I/O, parsing, encoding, and decoding. This adds first-hand support to all of these features and we don't need to manage extra dependencies. The Golang standard library is a set of programs that are packaged within the core language. They can be used to write generic programs and avoids the use of third-party published software. The Golang standard library extends the language and adds different types of programs that the developer can use. Since the packages are tied to the language we get guaranteed patches and updates to these libraries. all the new features are backward compatible. new features are continuously added to the standard library.

  A few examples of standard libraries are as below,

  fmt -  Package fmt provides formatted I/O with functions similar to printf and scanf in C language.

  os -  Package os implements a platform-independent interface to operating system functionality.

  encoding -  Package encoding defines interfaces that convert data to byte-level from textual representations and vice versa.

• Go Tools

  Golang is open-sourced and has vast support for tools. There are tools for formatting code, Documentation, Testing code coverage, and more. Apart from Golang-provided tools, there are plugins for various code editors and IDEs that simplify the interaction with Golang tools.
  A few examples of Golang Tools are as below,  

  go fmt - The gofmt command is used to format our Golang code.

  go build - This will output a single binary in the current directory.

  go list- This command list down all the installed packages in your current environment.

  go doc - go doc helps you get the documentation of any package service.

• Fast Executions and Build Creation

  Golang is compiled and statically typed language. Unlike language like python which is interpreted and dynamically typed. When a python program is executed it is interpreted by the interpreter line by line, This makes it way slower than Golang as it is first compiled and executed.

  As Golang is statically typed it knows data types, and it doesn't require checking types dynamically while executing this provides better performance at runtime.

Other Benefits of Golang

• Language of Cloud

  As Golang is fast, light on memory, and simple. It is perfect for developing cloud-based applications. Cloud providers like AWS(Amazon web services), GCP(Google Cloud Platform) and azure provides great support for Golang, which makes learning Golang exciting.

  Software tools like Docker and kubernetes are written in Golang which shows the versatility of Golang.

• Career Growth Opportunities

  Golang developers are one of the highest-paid developers in the industry. The Average annual salary in India is about ₹ 8,00,000 for a Golang developer.