Go (or Golang) is an open-source server-side programming language introduced and maintained by Google. It was developed in an attempt to combine the best of various programming languages in use by Google while avoiding their shortcomings.
Its main benefits over Java are that Go supports concurrency, is easier to write and read, is excellent at handling server-side queries, and executes faster than Java. The latter is due to that Go does not need a Virtual Machine — instead, it compiles directly into a binary executable. This limits the range of Go applications but makes it a reliable choice for the tasks it can handle.
Main benefits of Go development
Go was developed to support concurrency in processing, which allows using fewer resources and executing the code faster.
- Minimalism. The language core includes quite a limited quantity of orthogonal features that can be combined in a somewhat small number of ways. Thus, Go is simple to write, read, and compile, providing an errorless experience for developers and end-users of your apps.
- Packages. All Go apps are constructed using packages, which enable efficient code separation and dependency handling. Due to this feature, Go apps are predictable and manageable in their performance.
- Code transparency. Go is designed to ensure code transparency, so any developer familiar with Go (and its language specification is only 50 pages long) can understand what your code is doing and how much resources it needs for that. Due to this, onboarding new developers and knowledge transfer are much easier.
Go is an important server-side component that allowed Spintech to refactor the legacy PHP code for a popular eSports platform, future-proofing it and ensuring scalability and high performance under heavy workloads.