It’s Time to Go — The Language to Learn Next
Out of utter frustration with the existing selection of mainstream programming languages in 2007, which forced developers to choose between compilation, execution, or ease of programming, Google developers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson designed a new procedural programming language that addressed all three of these concerns. This now-widely-known and highly utilized language is Go. Since 2009, when Go was officially launched, it has gained impressive traction among big-name companies such as, PayPal, Facebook, and Twitter, to name a few. In this blog, we will, at a high level, look at some of Go’s software development purposes, additional companies that have hopped on the G-train, and why Go should be added to your list of programming languages.
Software Development Purposes
Cloud and Network Services
With concurrency being a very big issue with mainstream languages, the designers of Go made it a primary focus and have made it much easier for companies to grow to scale while writing concurrent applications that are deemed reliable.
Command-line Interfaces
CLIs can be developed more efficiently and effectively with Go due to its fast compilation speeds, consistent styling, and the flexibility of not requiring existing libraries, runtimes, or dependencies.
Web Development
Go has empowered developers to write secure web applications that scale with ease. In addition, it provides a web server that is easy to use, highly secure, and comes with a web template library. With Go’s advanced design, deploying a web application is less of a headache and is accomplished at a much quicker pace.
For more information on Go’s use cases, visit: Go - Use Cases.
Companies that Switched to Go
After seeing Google’s success with implementing Go, many other well-established companies have made the switch to Go as well. In addition to the previously mentioned companies that jumped ship, the list grows to include:
- CockroachDB
- American Express
- Salesforce
- Uber
- twitch
- Target
- Capital One
To further explore this list and the case studies, visit: Go - Case Studies.
Why Learn Go?
Taking the time to learn Go and developing a portfolio application with it is quite the benefit; this is simply because of it’s growing popularity and it shows potential employers that, as a developer, you stay up to date on the latest languages and that you’re driven to continue learning and strengthening your programming skills. Here’s a great blog by Amrit Pal Singh that has a more robust answer for learning Go: Why You Should Learn Golang In 2022.
Here are some links to get your Go journey going:
Ending Note:
The official name of the language is Go; not ‘golang’. Golang originated from the initial URL — golang.org, which was pre .dev domain days. The developers of Go have adapted to the ‘golang’ moniker because it has become a useful marketing tool… #golang.
Oh, and happy coding.
