Taking programming to the next level, Folks at Google themselves created its own language. The Language is known as “GoLang“. Moreover, I can say that it’s a game-changer in the world of programming. Our whole platform is based on programming languages. Therefore, the topic of the day is “Learning Google Go”.
We are going to talk about Go in detail today. So first of all, let’s talk about the history of Go and how it emerged. And why Learning Google Go is so important?
History of Google Go
We all know how to Go suddenly just emerged on the internet. It was like, it’s popularity was exploded overnight. So everyone is curious about the history of Go. Therefore, let’s talk about it.
Over seven years, Go was an Open Source language. Even before that it was a closed source. Closed source as in context, means that it was under was internally in Google. Yes! It is Google’s Project. So, in very simple words, the concept for actually making Go was to remove complexity in the world and stick to the easiest and simplest tool for the job. If that makes any sense. As we all know, the modern era is the smart era. So that’s why it kind of blends in the modern world.
They had this idea in their minds and hence, Go emerged. Therefore, in order to make powerful applications, you need some really powerful coding too. Powerful in a sense that the concepts and code. But Google’s Go Lang makes it at least easier to a significant ratio. Learning Google Go is the main focus of everyone at Google right now.
People think that only complex things can make complex stuff. But this ideology is pretty wrong. If you have an effect too, which makes the job easier with the same or maybe more powerful result, that’s better. Like I always say that Smart work is greater than Hard work.
How it all started?
Almost eleven years ago, the team of three Engineers at Google, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson started to build up the concepts of GOLANG. The whole purpose of making Go was to make the language easier for complex tasks. A pretty bold statement but they actually achieved it. Therefore, Go is going up in popularity day by day. Some people hate it and some love it.
The main focus of creators was to design a language which is simple yet powerful to use, yet handling all the complex system that was being held into Google itself. The goal was to remove the slowpoke that other languages were causing to software development. Moreover, eliminating the complex syntax of other languages that were making software development so slow.
Basically, even to solve a not-so-difficult-problem, they had to wait for like a whole day for the error to be fixed, talking about languages like C++. GoLang actually solved this problem completely. We can say that Go Lang contains the best concepts from all languages into an All-in-one package. This was one of the main reasons for the popularity of GO. It was designed in such a way that, developers made it error less free that other languages provided. Go is a near-perfect language. It provides many tools and features. Therefore, it is the future of programming languages.
Go Lang Now?
Since it’s emergence, Go lang has actually changed a lot. It has many new updates on it. The syntax of language had a new update. That is the sole reason, why Go is so user-friendly and easy to use. Go is ideal for the people who have never before, touch a programming language. The syntax is easy that it’s recommended for first-time learners. We will talk about the syntax in a bit though. GOLANG 1.12 is the latest version of language right now. It’s been white since Google is working on improving language significantly.
Now let’s talk about the simple syntax of Go
Syntax of Go
Go language is made of Tokens. The token can be defined as a Keyword, String literal, identifier or maybe a symbol. So let’s write a simple statement. Learning Google Go is easy.
fmt.Println(“This is an example “)
This statement contains six tokens. Unlike most other languages, Go does not need a line statement terminator. The language itself puts a ” ; ” terminator automatically in the back end of the code.
Comments
Comments are some statements that are totally ignored by the compiler at the time of execution. It helps the programmer to keep some notes at some place in code so that it’ll be easy to remember a certain something. Therefore, it starts with ” */ ” and ends with “/*” Here’s an example.
*/ This is a comment folks /*
Identifiers
Identifiers are used to identify a variable in a program. GoLang is a case sensitive programming language. Therefore, Meow and meow have different meanings. GoLang does not allow the user to put special punctuation characters as an identifier.
This is just a little touch of syntax.
Companies using Go
Go is a really great language. It is one of the best languages to ever emerge. It has superior error checking compared to all other languages. There has not a single language in the industry that provides features as much as Go does. Go is a mix of languages like C++, Java e.t.c. So it is superior to all other languages. The efficiency provided by google in this language is uncanny. The developers love to Go just because it makes their lives less complex. Since it’s inception into the word in 2007, it has really changed a whole lot.
Now let’s talk about the companies that use Go.
1) Google
It is the developer and user of GO. But where do they use it? It uses Go for their internal projects. For example, the source of chrome was rewritten using Go. App Engine also supports Go. Many projects are developed due to Go.
2) Uber
This big company also uses GoLang in their service. The most recent service is made in GO. It has made over one hundred services in the Go language.
The Technology of matching Drivers with Riders is written in Go. Datastore layer was written in python. However, as they became popular, to make data more perfect, they shifted towards Go.
3) Twitch
Twitch is a live streaming service. It consists of Music streaming, Gameplay and is basically a full fledged platform for content creators. The Transcode system in Twitch is implemented with the use of GoLang.
Due to the use of Go, Twitch has one of the best quality video streaming services we see today.
4) Dailymotion
This video platform is from France. At some point, it resembled YouTube in it’s prime time. In several countries, YouTube was blocked. So people used Dailymotion to actually view different content. GoLang is used in the automation of APIs in Dailymotion. This provides them a faster and greater result in performing different tests. Many backend projects in Dailymotion are been done.
Pros and Cons
Now we are going to talk about the pros and cons of Go. Is Learning Google go essential? I’m not saying that it is the best. In my opinion, the best language to learn probably Python. Learn more about python HERE. But let’s also take a look at what makes learning google go worth it?
Pros
Let’s talk about pros of Go at first. What makes this language so important that the name of our topic is Learning Google Go? Here are some of the pros that in my opinion, make it worth learning.
1) Planning
Go was created with a plan, keeping in view problems of different languages and then finally solving them to create this masterpiece. Go contains GoRoutines and Channels which are the primitives of language. The language is made concurrent. It’s not parallel. Therefore, you can focus on multiple problems rather than actually being parallel. It’s near Parallel programming.
Parallel programming is utilizing all cores of your CPU to perform. On the other hand, concurrency is running multiple processes on the same core.
2) Cross-Platform
One of the main advantages of Go is that it’s cross-platform. This means that it can be used to make applications for all other operating systems like, Windows, Mac, Android. Cross-platform was a big issue back in the days as there were not many languages available for it. Even Languages like C sharp didn’t have cross-platform support in the old times but with the passage of time, they actually updated it.
3) Avoiding Object-Oriented Programming
Go works without the concepts and hassle of OOP. In our industry though, there’s a huge demand for OOP concepts. But let’s be real, Go was designed keeping in view the multi-core processes and Object-Oriented Programming really doesn’t work with that. OOP makes programming pretty hard and GO avoids making programming hard.
There are no Classes and Inheritance. If you don’t like OOP then Go is really the way to go for you.
4) Simplicity
So, Go is really a simple language. It’s really easy and there’s literally no craft in the language itself. People usually get bored that it’s so simple. There’s just one way to do anything and that, to be honest, makes it pretty boring.
This was actually what they intended to do. Make things simpler and easy for the future. They didn’t want to train all the Engineers and give them thousands of dollars to make a simple program in a complex way. They made Go which literally made everything easy.
5) Secured
The fact that it was made by one of the largest companies just makes it pretty awesome and secure. The future of Go is really bright. It was made by engineers who are really top-notch in their lines. So yeah, it’s one of the pros that Go is backed up by the company.
7) Garbage Collector
This is my personal favorite feature of Go. I’ve worked on C++ and it has really been a hassle dealing with this garbage collector stuff. This is one of the main reasons why I just don’t like C++ at all. It’s a pretty plus point that Go has a built-in Garbage collector.
There’s a downside to this though. It takes away the flexibility to actually write some super-fast programs as memory management cannot be accessed by you.
Cons
Now let’s get into the part where Go really doesn’t live up to a standard of a programming language. So what makes Learning Google Go so good?
1) No Third-party Modules
Yes! Go doesn’t support third-party modules. The main reason for that is because going is really a new language. So there isn’t much of a support for third party modules. But there are a ton of libraries. People use many libraries every single day.
The charm of Java and Python, simple commands, and modules. They are missing in this language. Python’s awesome libraries to make GUI programs too. It’s a big drawback. There’s a lot of time left for third party modules to be supported.
2) Different from other languages
Now you might be wondering that if it’s different, doesn’t that make it better? The answer is No! That is because it’s not similar to other languages at all. Like if i read Java, I’ll be somewhat reminded of C++ but GO is just so different.
Also, go isn’t going to be used anytime in the near future so it deviates us away from other languages making this a whole other thing. It doesn’t look familiar to Java or C or C++ and JavaScript. It just makes things complex in a weird way. Like my programming was based on C and C++. To build stuff in Go, I have to think on a whole other angle to make stuff work.
3) Slow Error Handling
Go has a slow error handling. There are critiques all over the internet against it. Therefore, the Error handler that comes with Go is just no really helpful
4) Lack of Generics
People are critiquing about the lack of generics a lot. Basically generics means, building a code that is reusable. So you can’t really make some function and think that i can reuse it in any other away.
This is a huge problem with the language.
5) Not Adopted in Industry
After six years of release, the language is really not being fully used. Outside the google that is. Even if we take a look at stack overflow and stuff, there really aren’t many things available regarding Go. So you can say that it’s just not really relevant in this era.
Adoption of Go is still in its way but it’s just not that popular. It’s not like Python or stuff like that. The reason for that is because of the cons I’ve written about.
7) Lack of Jobs
The main con of Go is the lack of jobs. There just aren’t many jobs available outside Google for GO. There’s not much employment opportunity for Go programmers. So if you master other languages and become pro efficient in them, there’s a chance that you’ll get a decent job. But forgo, the boundaries are just so tiny. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find job or not. That’s the type of language it is.
These are all the cons that I found worth mentioning.
Learning Google Go?
The type of fluidity that Go provides us, is not provided by any other languages like Java or C++. So basically all the problems they faced at google, they just straight-up fixed that in Go language. It was made for lots of users working on a large program to actually increase the efficiency of that big chunk of data and make it easier and more greater than what other languages actually provide.
There has been a lot of changes in the computing environment in the last decade and Go makes it perfect to handle big networking task, making them really simple and efficient for the programmers and the users. Cloud computing now a day is really into the game and it has such big chunks of data. To actually analyze and read data, it’s very time consuming for other languages. But for Go, it makes everything efficient. Efficiency is the key to success. So basically, a modern language for the modern computing environment is really important for today’s world. So we want everything to be efficient as Go will run of thousands of machines to handle data. It does it really well.
No one wants to waste their resources of some low-level interpreter that’ll uselessly make the work larger. Isn’t that right? So this compiled language called Go was made for this sole purpose. Rob Pike actually says in a video that compiling is really fast. Like, Go can compile and run programs faster than some interpreters would even start. That’s the sort of efficiency we need in the world today. Typical build time is under one second, said Rob.
Making Job Easier
Now building a server is actually a time-consuming job. In other languages, it’s matters of several minutes but after learning google Go does it in matter of seconds. That’s how efficient it is. The Initial goal was really to make it fast but eventually, they thought that it was really possible to actually make it stronger, powerful and efficient. Not to mention also fast.
Python vs Go
Python is just general-purpose used language, basically, it can be used for literally any purpose. It’s a scripting language but also used to write large industrial language. It is also used to build GUI and web development. It also used in search engines.
Performance
In terms of performance, Go language slays python. It has an upper hand in solving complex equations and stuff. Mandle brot, N-Body, and Fasta. In solving a complex equation like these, Go is just super faster.
Scalability
In today’s standard, we need to build scalable languages. It’s a work of art. If not, it’s bad for your whole business. So GoLang is actually better in Concurrent programming channels. Basically it’s multi-thread stuff and I’ve explained it before. So GoLang utilizes it better. So it’s just better execution time in Go Lang which makes everything so fast and Smooth.
It’s a perfect language for scalability so Go lang wins here.
Applications
So Python is made for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence whereas GoLang is used to make large programs in less time. So which one wins?
First of all let’s talk about how they both work. Python has Dynamically Typed language and GoLang is statically typed language.
Python works with Interpreter and Go works with the compiler. All types of bugs can be detected using a compiler and not Interpreter. But you don’t have to specify the type every time. When you actually find a bug in python it means that the interpreter has missed it. So no one wins here actually, that is my point. Therefore, Learning Google Go is actually better for making some really cool apps too.
Support for Libraries
Libraries are a Gift to programmers as they make our lives very easy and efficient. In terms of libraries, python actually takes the cake. It has many many libraries which are efficient and powerful. Python is really popular for having a lot of libraries.
But GoLang also contains a lot of libraries but not really on par with Python. There are still libraries for Data handling and Web development which are really strong.
Readability
Now readability is another factor in the popularity of a programming language. If you are developing a program for many programs, readability becomes a factor of actual death and life matter I’d say.
Python has actually easy syntax. Most of the people think that python takes the cake. But my opinion is a little different. So, GoLang has only one way of doing a certain code procedure but there are a couple of ways it can be done on Python. So that just leaves us to confusion. I’d say again that no one actually wins here.
Python has it’s own flaws and Go has it’s own.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, I’d say that Go is really an awesome language to learn. But to be honest it should be a second priority for now as it’s not that big. So we should develop Go skills as secondary because in the Future there might be many companies using GoLang. That was the main focus of our topic today.
