What is Golang?

Go, also known as Golang, is a modern programming language. Its features and advantages make it increasingly popular.

A brief introduction to Go

Go is a free and open-source language. It’s a statically typed language. Go is strongly typed, and it is a compiled language.

A team of software engineers at Google started creating Go in 2007. This team comprised Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. This project team announced Golang as an open-source project in 2009. They released the first version of Go in 2012.

The creators wanted to create an easy-to-use language. Cloud-based programming needed a developer-friendly language, and this was in their mind. They also wanted productivity from C-like advanced features.

Advantages of Go

Go offers the following advantages:

• Capabilities: Go offers key capabilities and features offered by C. That makes it a feature-rich language.
• Simplicity: While Go offers highly powerful features, it’s a simple language. Many developers like Go due to its simplicity.
• Very short learning curve: Programmers can learn Go very quickly. They can become productive quickly.
• Versatility: Go is a multi-purpose programming language with inherent versatility. It’s a popular language for server-side web development. Furthermore, you can use it for data science, cloud-based programming, etc.
• Documentation: You can get excellent documentation for Go. The documentation is extensive and easy to follow.
• Bright future: Google supports Go. The language has seen plenty of developments already, and it will become even more powerful.
• Prevents common errors: Go is statically typed. You can avoid many common programming errors due to this.
• Performance: Go is a compiled language, therefore, it offers robust performance.
• Easier deployment: The size of the binary file of a Go app is small. This makes deployment easier.
• Highly suitable for large and complex projects: Go helps developers in large and complex app development projects. Programmers can expedite the project, thanks to the features offered by Go. E.g., the compilation for Go is quick. Therefore, developers receive feedback quickly.
• A specific solution for a requirement: Golang offers one concrete solution for one programming problem. That contributes to its simplicity. That’s different from languages that offer many solutions for each problem.
• Ease of maintenance: Code written in Go is easy to maintain.
• Concurrency: Go supports concurrency, therefore, it can handle multiple threads. It supports parallel processing offered by multi-core processors.
• Open-source model: Go is open-source, therefore, many developers make useful contributions towards its growth.
• Community support: There’s a growing and vibrant community of Golang developers. Therefore, you can get support quickly.

How popular is Go?

While Go is a relatively new language, many organizations are embracing it. The TIOBE Index mentions Golang as the 14^th most popular language.

According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey report, Go is ranked 14^th among the most popular programming languages. This report states that Go is the 10^th most-loved language.

Where can you use Golang?

Go is often used for server-side programming in web development projects. In addition to back-end web development, developers use Go for the following purposes:

• Game development;
• Cloud-based programming;
• Data science-related programming;
• Creating command-line tools.

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