Why is GoLang so popular ?

Question

Hello there,

I've seen for a while the Go language in the top trending programming languages for the last 3 years (average)

But I was wondering, why is it so popular ?
Python for instance has a simple syntax and is widely used in data science and machine learning, Java isn't much loved anymore in the last 5 years but still pretty used for cross-plateform applications...

But I can't see anything special with Go, except it has a particular syntax that a few seems to fully appreciate (not to mention it introduced new syntaxes like the walrus operator that a good part I saw of the community doesn't seem to embrace much), and it is pretty young (and maybe not mature enough)

So what kind of implementation does it have, what kind of field does it targets to be so popular nowaday ?
And also, should I learn it to get a job in, say, 5 years ? Or is it a wildfire that will more likely be forgotten ?

Answer 1

Winston-Delbert Gaster 👍You are welcome!😊

Scalability indicates the possibility of growth while maintaining all the basic properties and functions.

Scalability is a desirable property of a product, network, or system that indicates the possibility of growth without altering basic features or functions.

**Here's what it looks like in practice: once you design and patent your shoe, others can develop it further. Designing a shoe makes a lot more money than manufacturing. Production is by no means scalable – while idea generation is.😉

[ Edited: ]
For which purpose is the Go programming language used?
• https://www.quora.com/For-which-purpose-is-the-Go-programming-language-used

Answer 2

It's hard to predict the future. It is probably popular because it has a major company behind it.

Answer 3

Why Go?
• https://www.sololearn.com/post/77107/?ref=app

Answer 4

Eriberto Mendez
[ Learning Go: ]
• From zero to hero — https://medium.freecodecamp.org/learning-go-from-zero-to-hero-d2a3223b3d86

[ Go Introductory Tutorials: ]
• A list of tutorials to understand Go Programming Language with deep dive into language spec with basic examples — https://medium.com/rungo/go-introductory-tutorials-896aeda0fb8a

Answer 5

rudolph flash The question, as it stands, is impossible to predict.

Businesses that do this conversion will only consider a rewrite if they can justify the costs and delay for new features during that rewrite.

In that regard, this would apply to a smaller set of projects that require support for high concurrency, low latency requests. At that level, the costs are exceptionally much higher.

Even then, it's not clear if you are referring to microservices or Web APIs. That would impact the speculation about which makes more sense.

Answer 6

Sonic Good guess, but I'm doubting. The same company has Dart, language of the Flutter framework, which is however ranked in the "top 10 worst programming languages to learn in 2018" and not even in trending, while it's right now heavily developed and offers a bigger opportunity (cross plateform — mobile and desktop this time — development) than Go does, at least in my knowledge

Answer 7

Danijel Ivanović Thanks a lot ! It's clearer for me now. So it's mainly for performances and maintainability
But there's a point I didn't got right, with this sentence: "[…] this language was designed for massive scalability"
What does it mean concretely ?

Answer 8

Winston-Delbert Gaster In the context of Golang, scalability refers to Go's very efficient and lightweight approach for parallel processing via Goroutines.

Goroutines is able to run multiple executions across multiple CPU cores that aren't tied to thread overhead.

By comparison, Javascript supports single execution, running one at a time on a single thread. Javascript uses an event loop with levels is prioritization for promises, callbacks, and functions with non-blocking IO that runs incredibly fast. However, it's still, only single threaded execution.

Hopefully, this makes some sense.

Answer 9

Looks like Go is competing with Python in the Data Science arena. If it adds convenient AI/ML libraries, will it render Python obsolete?

Answer 10

Go will be a strong alternative to C/C++ languages. If support for generics are ever added, I imagine I might be more interested in it for other applications.

Kotlin is still my favorite new kid on the block.

Python is massively popular among non programmers, programmer hobbyists, students, and a niche industry known as data science.

However, it's not nearly as popular in enterprise / professional development circles. In fact, aside from a few big name companies known to have implemented python as their core, it's non existent among my network of developers. So, I don't think it would take much for Python to fade away into oblivion once the false survey hype dies down.

Answer 11

Eriberto Mendez These links may be a good start to review:

https://medium.com/quick-code/top-online-courses-to-learn-go-programming-language-golang-for-beginners-c228c615946c

https://medium.com/hackr-io/learn-golang-best-go-tutorials-for-beginners-deb6cab45867

Learn Go Programming - Golang Tutorial for Beginners (6 hr 40 mins)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YS4e4q9oBaU

Go Programming Language Tutorial | Golang Tutorial For Beginners | Go Language Training | Edureka (1 hr 8 min)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0sKAMal4WQ

Go / Golang Crash Course (1 hr 38 min)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SqrbIlUwR0U

Answer 12

Evan Martine Thanks for your answer ! However, aren't interpreted languages supposed to be slower than compiled ?

Answer 13

ShadowWrath72 Same here, I prefer Rust's syntax over Go's

Answer 14

David Carroll I don't think Python will completely fade in oblivion. If it has been out for so long and is used in multiple fields, I think it could still resists beyond the fact that it is not much popular in a more professionnal circle.

Answer 15

The major benefit of using C, C++ over other modern high-level languages is their performance. Processors understand binaries. When you build an app using Java or other JVM-based language, it compiles the human readable code to byte-code. Go works like an interpreted language, making it super fast.

Answer 16

Thank you everyone for your explanations and sources, now I understand 😁

Answer 17

GoLang is from Google
and you already know what sort of legacy it had imbibed

coming to programming language it's a must in learner's list......

Answer 18

Eriberto Mendez I've not seen a course for Golang.

I'm curious about why the interest in Go? Are you already familiar with other languages or were you planning to learn this one first?

Answer 19

Eriberto Mendez
My preferred starting Go reference is here:
https://www.golang-book.com/books/intro

Looks like its been taken off the official Go website (which has some new resources). Might be slightly older but, very good regardless.

Answer 20

Thanks for the links guys much appreciated!