The Pros And Cons Of Programming In Go

The modern-day ‘Google’ is much more than just a search engine, as it has been constantly climbing the stairs by being versatile in every field possible. It has also given its due contribution to the ever-growing need for programming efficiency by introducing the world to Golang in 2007 – an initiative simplifying the world of programming, despite golang pros and cons.

Apart from this, It has not only touched upon the sides of web services and information but also made it up to entertainment and communication by delivering technological solutions which are marvels in and of themselves.  

But if you heard about both GoLang and Go (confused?), then there is no need to muddle your head over it now. Golang is derived from the domain name golang.org. and is far more accessible on Google than “Go”. On the other hand, Go is the authoritative term.

Although it’s been more than a decade since go programming language was created, despite this fact it probably won’t have the installed base of languages such as JavaScript and Python yet it has a lot that can be brought to the table.

Let’s go back in time with Go

Go got its existence when Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson were brainstorming on how to create a framework for systems-level language and came up with the idea for this open-source programming language. They mainly focused on resolving issues coming in writing codes with other programming languages without missing out on their unique characteristics and features.

Thus, GoLang is appropriately based on the standard syntax of C/C++ language, with the following additional benefits:

• Garbage Collection
• Memory Safety 
• Automatic Declaration Of Variables
• Structural Typing
• CSP-Style Concurrency
• Keep up with multi-threading 

Go was originally introduced in 2009, and it was officially open source in 2012 with the release of its first version, 1.0. Since then, it has been used for backend server-side programming, cloud-based programming, data science, game development, and even well-known for creating command-line tools.

Because of its effortlessness, lucidity, productivity, and simultaneous nature go programming language quickly soared into popularity and became many developers’ one of the most preferred choices due to the ability to run many tasks simultaneously. Google, Ethereum, Netflix,  Dropbox, Twitch, Kubernetes, Heroku, and Docker are some of the top tech giants that use GO today.

However, the Golang has made its active prominence. It is always recommended to first refer to what you’re attempting to build before considering the language to work on it when deciding on a programming language for a project. So, after deciding on the former, it is a must to choose the language by keeping in mind its pros and cons. 

Now, let’s figure out why use go programming language? What is go programming language used for? How well does Golang fit into your idea? after going through golang pros and cons.

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What can be the golang pros and cons?

Golang appears to be the first love of every startup when it comes to incorporating it into their backend systems by dint of the following advantages of golang:

• Go is a lightning-fast programming language, as it is a machine code compilation and easily outperforms languages that have virtual runtimes. As a result, the binary is very small because it complies comparatively fast.

• The syntax structure of the go programming language is small when compared to other languages (is golang hard to learn?), which ultimately makes it easy to learn and most of it can be easily memorized. So, it does not require a lot of effort to check up on things regularly because it is exceptionally clean and straightforward to read.

• Likewise other strong and statically typed languages, it allows the compiler to help get whole classes of errors. It also offers built-in maps, lists, primitive types such as byte, int, string, and even strucks, which are simple to use.

• Interfaces of go (programming language) can satisfy any struct by executing its strategies. You may write more tested and modular code by the means of its interfaces. It has cutting-edge possibilities as well which enable you to write your code in a more functional manner.

• Unlike C and C++, memory management has been made purposefully simple and easy in go programming. Objects that are dynamically distributed are gathered garbage. It is much safer to use pointers in Go in addition to the usage of value types.

As you just read, there are many pros to using GO. On the other hand, there are cons too, as a programming language can mean much more than just its syntax. Here are some points that you should be cautious of:

• There are no generics in go coding language, even though it contains excellent abilities to write functions such as “filter”, “reduce” or “map” but it is not possible to reuse these same functions for different types of collections. There are solutions to deal with this besides having a negative impact.

• While interfaces of Go are seen as its strength, it gets difficult to know if a struct could be implemented in an interface or not, and the only way to know this is after the compilation of the program.

• The Go library support is patchy, as it requires you to write tons of code to request and phrase data from integrated API. Further, there is a need to rely on external libraries.

• The Go community might be non-receptive when it comes to suggestions. It appears to have a different point of view than that of web frameworks. Despite its HTTP library covering most of the things, it doesn’t help with many cross-cutting concerns, path parameters, input validation, and sanitization that are common in a web application.

• The management is fractured and it might be quite perplexing for developers just starting with Go. Moreover, Git repositories back up almost every virtual package management whose historical backdrop can be changed at any time.

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All in all, there is no such programming language if you are looking for an all-rounder one, same is the case with golang pros and cons. Although the pro attributes for Go are clear and its accessibility along with its popularity at Google makes it a promising language, it has its shortcomings too like every other programming language. For this reason, it becomes necessary to pay due attention to the pros and cons of golang carefully before taking it as a new language to learn or attempting to incorporate it into the basis of your project.