In the world of programming languages, there is no respite for breakthroughs and innovations. The developers are always in search of an easier, more sophisticated and more project-friendly language that meet their needs. GoLang came as such as astounding new programming language with a full pack of solutions. Ever since it arrived, GoLang took the entire programming world by surprise.

Here we are going to unravel many of these surprises that make this language stand apart from others. Let’s begin with a little introduction to the core capability.

Source: callicoder.com

The Core Capability of GoLang

The GoLang was reportedly conceived by developers at Google when they were waiting for the code compilation to complete in a project. This is precisely why GoLang is the only language that incorporates all three sought-after capabilities, namely, ease of coding, efficient code-compilation and efficient execution. Bringing all these capabilities in one language is what made GoLang so special.

Go or GoLang, as it is called, is a robust system-level language used for programming across large-scale network servers and big distributed systems. Golang emerged as an alternative to C++ and Java for the app developers in the context of what Google needed for its network servers and distributed systems. The language was created to do away with the lack of pace and difficulties involved with programming for large and scalable servers and software systems. To be precise, at Google, Go came to offer the following solutions.

• Fast-paving compilation and execution

• Do away with the need of working with different subsets of languages for one project.

• A boost to code readability and documentation

• Offering a thoroughly consistent language

• Facilitating easy versioning of the program

• Allowing developing with multiple languages

• Allowing easier maintenance of dependencies

Now let us focus on few areas that made GoLang so special from all previous programming languages so far.

Multithreading And Concurrency

As hardware continues to get sophisticated over time, the manufacturers keep on adding cores to the system to ensure better performance. When handling such an increasing number of cores the system needs to maintain database connections through microservices, manage the queues and maintain caches. This is why today’s hardware needs a programming language that can support concurrency better, and that can scale up performance with the increase of added cores over time.

A vast majority of programming languages lack concurrent execution when working with multiple threads and so, they often slow down the pace of programming, compiling and execution. This is where Go comes as the most viable option to support multi-threading environment and concurrency both.

Go as a language was conceived at a time when multi-core processors became widely available across sophisticated hardware. Naturally, the creators of Go gave particular focus on the concurrency. Go works with goroutines and not threads and this allows this language to concurrently handle a huge number of tasks at one go.

Go Empowers the Hardware from Within

Hardware processors only understand binaries, and so any application built with Java or JVM language is interpreted into binaries. This interpretation at the hardware level actually adds to the required time for execution. This is why languages like C/C++ that is compiled language can remove the step of interpretation can actually boost performance and speed of execution.

But extracting the variables and allocating them in this C/C++ involves a lot of complexities and time. This is where Go comes as an ideal solution that brings the best of both worlds. Go just like C/C++ comes as a compiled language and this makes it as high-performing as them. On the other hand like Java for allocation of variables, it uses garbage collection and the object removal. This makes Go as an ideal language to work within any hardware system.

Unmatched Simplicity of Go

Simplicity is one of the core advantages of embracing Go. Being a highly sophisticated language with rich feature set Go stands taller among the equals simply because of the simplicity and straightforward approach.

No Generics: Generics or templates which remained a mainstay for various programming languages often add to the obscurity and difficulties of understanding. Go designers by deciding to go without it made things simple.

• Single Executable: GoLang comes without any separate runtime library. It can produce a single executable code that can be deployed by just copying. This helps in removing all the concerns of committing mistakes on dependencies or versions mismatch.

• No Dynamic Libraries: Go just decided to do away with any dynamic library to keep the language simple and straightforward. Although, in the latest Go 1.10 version the developers are given the option to upload dynamic libraries through plug-in packages. This has just been included only as an extended capability.

Inbuilt Framework for Testing and Profiling

When building an application with JavaScript many of us experienced the complexities of choosing a testing framework through a series of analysis. It is also a fact that most of the times we fail to utilise more than 20% of the chosen framework. The same difficulty arises when you need good profiling for evaluation.

Go offers inbuilt testing and profiling tool to help you test the application easily and efficiently. The tool can be utilised for all types of testing and profiling needs apart from providing ready to execute examples of code.

Easy Learning Curve

One of the most significant positive aspects of Go is its lower learning curve. You shouldn’t be surprised if we say that all the features of GoLang can be learned just at one sitting of a few hours. Obviously, after learning these core features, you need to learn the best programming practices for specific needs and the standard library. But at least to begin with the language a two to three-hour sitting can be enough.

GoLang is also widely acclaimed for its easy and clear documentation. For further advancement, the developers can always visit The Go Programming Language Blog.

Conclusion

GoLang came as a massive value addition to the programming of complex applications underlying performance-savvy hardware systems and large scalable enterprise software systems. No wonder, within a few years it received such a vast following from developers around the globe.