At the moment, Golang is one of those programming languages that is rapidly gaining popularity. This language is relatively young, but despite this, it is very good. It perfectly combines conciseness and good performance, which allows you to create highly loaded applications in less time.
Go was created by its authors, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson, as a universal language, but it is most suitable for developing server applications and services where complex calculations, multi-threaded systems, parsers, and all that are needed. Golang is a compiled language, and although its ecosystem has its own interpreter, it is rarely needed. The code compiles very quickly anyway.
Go differs from other languages primarily in its high speed and simplicity of syntax. It has few grammatical constructions and abstractions. Even a beginner can learn its syntax in one month. The library has some features that can be used in working on different projects. There is everything related to networks, so you can choose not to use the LINUX API.
The Go language is designed so that developers do not deal with garbage collection, creating documentation, and keeping track of deprecated syntactic constructs, but deal with architecture and logic, which are the main thing. Golang is easy to use and is good precisely because the execution of all routine operations has been removed from the programmer and transferred to the built-in tools.
Golang provides automatic memory management and a garbage collector. In the C and C++ languages, you have to manually manage memory, always remember what we put in it, and when extra data can be removed from memory. In Golang, the programmer doesn’t have to think about it, the compiler takes care of everything to be perfect, while it is not inferior to the first two in speed.
The three main advantages of Go that explain its popularity are its simplicity, the standard library, and the fact that it allows for concurrent, programming. Go was developed by Google as an alternative to C and C++.
The language can be assembled on your computer for almost any MILS or ARM architecture, sent to the server, and run. A lot of modern things are written in Go from Docker and the Kubernetes clustering system to the Prometheus monitoring system. The language has good support for parallel computing.
Another advantage is the package manager. Go has a code auto-documentation system, an internal profiler, an internal test writing system, that is, everything that would need to be added in other programming languages. The only alternative, which I know in the simplicity of work and power of functions, is Nix.
But these are not the only strengths of Golang. Among other things, by learning Go, every programmer can learn several useful things.
OOP is not the best universal option for programming everything
The best approach to writing reliable code is simplicity. Therefore, the first goal of developers should be to reduce code complexity.
According to many, OOP is the gem of computer science and the perfect solution for organizing code, the end of all problems. The only true way to write programs. But unfortunately, this is far from the case. People begin to succumb under the weight of abstractions and a complex graph of randomly shared mutable objects. Precious time and effort are wasted thinking about abstractions and design patterns instead of solving real problems. Many criticize object-oriented programming.
In turn, Go does not complicate the whole classification and hierarchy with traditional OOP approaches, although it also supports similar methods. Golang still allows many functions to be written procedurally in the functional paradigm, and these functions make up the majority. In this, it is similar to other functional languages, like Haskell, which is also not necessary for every programmer, but knowing it you get a lot of benefits. Writing in this style is more natural to human thinking.
Handle errors based on exceptions designed for exceptional cases
Exceptions are an error handling mechanism that replaces the return of an error code from functions. However, many developers still use error code return instead of exceptions. Exceptions were invented to make error handling easier with less code clutter. You should use them when they make it easier to handle errors with less noise in your code.
This “exception for exceptional circumstances only” is because anomaly handling was considered an unacceptable performance hit. This is no longer the case for the vast majority of code, but people still propagate the rule without remembering why it happened.
From a command sequencing point of view, returning an error code is no different than returning an invalid value or setting an error flag in the global object. In all of these cases, a function that doesn’t know how to properly process input passes those responsibilities directly to the code that called it.
Exceptions are a safer and more convenient mechanism than error codes because by specifying exceptions, the compiler ensures that you don’t inadvertently miss handling an error. Errors will be delivered to the appropriate handler. Sometimes, just by using exceptions, you can significantly reduce the amount of error handling code in half. This is why you should use exceptions instead of error codes – this approach will have a positive impact on the architecture of the entire application.
Many developers abuse exceptions and throw them at every chance. Exceptions should be rarely used because exceptions are irregular expensive. There are a number of problems that can be used for an exception, but it is unwise to use them for flow control.
Try to find as many solutions as possible
Programmers solve code-related problems and sometimes it can be done easily. But this applies to a minority of them. The majority do not have simple solutions, and we have to look for workarounds. Often, when trying to apply direct solutions to a complex problem, the task becomes even more complicated as a result, because then many reworks are required, and the system becomes unreliable and insecure.
Optimization seems to be the key to great, efficient code, but if done earlier than necessary, we usually get a lot of problems. However, it is better to spend more time optimizing as you work out the most appropriate solution in a given situation, so as not to face the difficulties of reversing decisions that have already been made.
For this purpose, there are Goroutines in Golang, which help to solve issues of parallel programming. These are functions that can run in parallel, that is, the program executes several lines almost simultaneously. To make a goroutine out of a function, you just need to write “go” in front of it. The execution of goroutines in Go is monitored by a special runtime library that distributes processor cores between them and can limit the number of available cores. The library helps to run a huge number of goroutines, which is much more than the operating system allows, and does not require the programmer to manually parallelize.
What is the outcome?
Multithreading Golang supports the functional programming paradigm. While Go has imperative constructs, elements of OOP, and more, its strong functional paradigm makes the language a powerful tool like Haskell, which is great for high-load server-side solutions, services, and complex computations.
Golang is a powerful and modern programming language. It is fast and at the same time simple enough that even a beginner could master it. In addition to simple and concise documentation, Go has a friendly community where you can always ask a question.
An experienced programmer will quickly learn it as a second language. The prospects for the Golang are quite serious for a long time. The language is maintained by Google but lives on as an independent open source project.
Nowadays, people who know Go are in demand in the market, but a good programmer knows more than one language. If a specialist has strong fundamental knowledge of development, he or she easily learns new languages.
