Considering the tech stack for your project may be challenging. You need not only explore all the nuances of the language but the pool of tech talent available. In addition, you should keep in mind all business goals. It is especially important when it comes to the backend. No matter how beautiful the product’s design is, no one will enjoy it without a stable backend. The discussion about best languages for server-side development continues, and Java, Python, Node.js, Rust, Go fight for the championship. In this article, we explain why Go might be an excellent choice for your backend and when to use it.
Why Go: the advantages of Golang over others
Relatively new Go was designed by Google and released in 2012. It takes static typing from С/C++ and aims for code readability similar to Python and JS. But unlike all competing languages, Go aims to make software development easier and faster. Let’s discover the main Go benefits:
- Concurrency. Concurrent programming is one of Go’s strongest benefits. It has Goroutines, light-weight functions that can run independently at the same time.
- Easy maintenance. Go doesn’t have the crazy programming language syntax that other languages have. Golang overlooks many modern OOP features and is divided into packages, but no classes.
- Unique error syntax. Golang error syntax includes errors as values in the code. It simplifies the process of identifying bugs and saves development time.
- Cloud-friendliness. Docker and Kubernetes are popular cloud tools built with Go. Thus, microservices and cloud computing are two great uses of Go. It is weightless, compatible with various architectures and operating systems, and compiles quickly.
- Built-in testing tools. Go’s built-in support for unit testing makes it easy to test as you go. With Go test package and Go test command, you can quickly write and run tests.
- High-performing. It was designed to automate on a large scale, so Go makes it relatively easy to write high-performance applications.
Now let’s see what use cases will be most successful with Go.
When Go: Golang use cases
Since Golang was designed to facilitate software development, it is particularly suitable for complex multi-tenant applications with large codebases. Projects with a growing number of users and a high volume of requests are the main areas for using Go. Now let’s discover Go use cases in detail. So, Golang is best for:
- Cloud-native development. The concurrency and networking features, combined with its high portability across multiple platforms, make Go a great language for cloud computing. Among bright use cases are Docker, Kubernetes, Dropbox, and Terraform.
- Media platforms Similarly, Youtube, SoundCloud, and Netflix run on Go. Qualified data processing is one of Go’s main powers, so these online platforms made the right Go choice.
- News portal BBC uses Go on its backend. Go’s ability to be multi-threaded for maximum CPU usage helps when it comes to managing a huge multimedia website.
- On-demand services like Uber successfully use Go to improve map processing speed when users send thousands of geolocations per minute.
Among other targets for Golang could be:
- Large eCommerce websites with dozens of concurrent uses, transactions, adds to cart.
- DevOps and site reliability automation.
- Replacement of existing infrastructure.
- Utilities and offline tools.
- Artificial intelligence and data science.
- Micro-controller programming, robotics, and games.
- Command-line tools creation.
And the cherry on top is Google support. Sure, it’s not a direct technical advantage, but Google has one of the biggest cloud infrastructures in the world, which is a plus when you consider the scalability. Go is created to solve problems faced by the Google team in supporting scalability and effectiveness. So, using Go is like following market leaders.
Summary
Our article not only answered, “When use Golang?” but highlighted some points about Golang powers that will be suitable for your future business projects. As a brilliant initiative by Google, Go can give you many advantages, namely parallelism, and speed. Thus, you can use it in any environment where network speed and power should be a priority. The only trap with Go is hiring skilled developers. So, if experts are all you need — contact us and start your project today!
