Go (often referred to as GoLang) has gained massive popularity recently, with prominent users such as Google, Netflix, and Uber, along with a thriving open-source developer community. In the second quarter of 2023, Go achieved 3rd rank among programming languages (GitHub). Additionally, it re-entered the top 10 list of the Tiobe Index, a position it had previously held in 2017.

Deliberately crafted to embody simplicity, reliability, and efficiency, Go, created by Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson, enjoys strong support from a dedicated developer community.

It’s a statically typed and compiled language, known for its concise syntax and built-in concurrency support, and has emerged as a preferred choice for web development, system programming and data science. Let’s dive into the reasons behind Go’s burgeoning popularity.

Why Golang is Popular?

Complexity, inefficiency, and the difficulty of using traditional languages for concurrency force developers to look for an alternative. Traditional languages also have issues with documentation, and some of them no longer have an active community, making it difficult to find support. Other common challenges that developers face include:

• Memory management: Languages like C/C++ lack automatic memory reclamation, which can lead to memory leaks and crashes. Java and C#, on the other hand, rely on garbage collection, which can introduce unpredictable pauses.

• Microservices: Legacy languages struggle with microservices due to insufficient concurrency support. This makes it difficult to handle multiple concurrent requests and can also make distributed interactions inefficient.

• Containerization: Languages without built-in containerization support face integration challenges with cloud-native workflows. Modifying these languages for containerized deployment can slow down development.

Cloud-Native Development With Go

Go is a prime choice for cloud-native development owing to its adept concurrency management, quick execution, and memory efficiency. It handles memory automatically, warding off crashes, and boasts a versatile standard library, minimizing external dependencies. Go's simplicity and cross-platform adaptability align seamlessly with containerization practices. Supported by a robust community and tools, development is streamlined, while its consistent performance ensures the responsiveness and scalability crucial for cloud-native applications.

Learning Golang – Adoption Challenges

Go offers many benefits but it can be challenging to learn and adapt, especially for developers who are comfortable with other programming languages. One is Go’s relatively concise standard library, which makes finding the functionality you need difficult, especially if you are used to a language with a larger library. Another reason lies in Golang concurrency model, which uses a different paradigm than traditional multithreading.

Adopt Golang With Compage

Did we dampen your spirits? Fret not, Compage is here to help! Compage is a low-code framework that uses a diagram-to-code method to help developers of all levels create Golang applications. Moreover, with security scanning, the framework helps improve the security and reliability of Golang applications. If you're looking for an easy way to get started with Go, try Compage.

Try Compage on GitHub | Installation Guide | Contribution Guide

The future of Go is promising, and Compage is a tool that can help developers make the most of it.

Compage is a backend automation platform that speeds up the code generation process, improves security, and is open source. You can check it out on GitHub and build your first Golang project. Compage is also constantly evolving to meet the needs of developers. As Go continues to grow in popularity, Compage will be there to help developers take advantage of its capabilities.