About Go Language: What You Need to Know
Go is a procedural, open-source programming language developed by Google that made its first stable release in 2011.
Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and Robert Griesemer started designing Go in 2007, and it became open sourced in 2009.
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Inspired from different programming languages, the Go language is designed following the features and properties of C, Pascal, Algol, Oberon, Modula, Newsqueak, and Smalltalk. If you take a closer look, Go inherited mostly from Oberon, while its syntax is very close to the C language.
The object-oriented programming behavior of Go is similar to Smalltalk, though Go allows attachment of methods to any type. Its concurrency, on the other hand, is mostly from Newsqueak which is a language that Rob Pike also created.
Go is increasingly becoming popular because it enables simple, reliable, and efficient software development. With Go, programs are assembled using packages for better and more efficient management of dependencies. It also supports environment adopting patterns similar to dynamic languages.
Why Learn Go Language?
Whether you’re a professional programmer with years of experience in software development or a beginning coder exploring various programming languages you want to focus on, Go language has features and properties that should convince to learn and master the language.
Easy to work with and understand: Fast languages like C are generally unsafe and difficult to work with. Slower languages like Ruby, on the other hand, are safe but has many dependencies. Java is a bit complex and verbose to write. Unlike these popular languages, Go is concise, explicit and easy to work with.
Delivers fast results: Go is designed with fast compilation, as if youre working in an interpreted language like Ruby. Unlike other programming languages, you dont have to wait when working with Go; you wont even notice that its compiling.
Modern: Because Go is relatively a new programming language, it was designed to overcome the limitations and solve the problems of earlier languages. It removes obstacles and complexities in dependencies, compilation, security, and maintenance. It also comes with built-in support for multi-core networked distributed applications and other concerns that may arise.
Safe: Go is safe because its both a strongly-typed and statically-typed language. Strongly-typed means you need to be explicit, because you are not allowed to pass any type of data everywhere. On the other hand, statically-typed means compiler knows the type of every variable in your code. When using Go, there are no implicit type conversions.
Garbage collected: Go cleans up your dirt for you. Whats more is that it integrates the entire garbage collection system into your executable binary.
Excellent built-in command-line tools: With Go, you can easily auto-format your code, check race-condition issues, test coverage reporting, perform auto-documentation, refactor tools, rearrange code, and so much more using simple command tools.
It’s no wonder why in a span of 8 years, Go has attracted at least half a million programmers in its community. Big and notable companies are known to be using the Go language, including Google, Dropbox, Docker, Medium, Heroku, Lyft, and Uber to name a few.