Go is an open source procedural programming language designed at Google in 2007 and launched in 2009. Go is easy to read and allows multiple processes to run simultaneously. Its flexibility gives it a range of uses, notably in Big Data, machine learning, containers and virtualization. A number of well known applications are programmed in Go.
It is a statically typed and compiled language that is syntactically similar to C, but has memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing, and CSP-style concurrency, making it good for multi-core uses. Programs are assembled by using packages for effective management of dependencies. Like dynamic languages, Go supports environment-adopting patterns. The programming language is sometimes referred to as Golang because of its domain name golang.org, but the correct name is Go.
Go is not as object-oriented as other languages, as it doesn’t provide the class keyword and has no support on inheritance. It does, however, provide structs as a replacement for classes. Its compilation time is fast and provides a lot of control over memory allocation. It reduces latency in the most recent versions of the garbage collector. Go has a powerful standard library and is a sturdy language for general-purpose programming.
Features of Go
- Static typing: Since Go is a statically typed language, the compiler not only compiles the code successfully, but also ensures type conversions and compatibility.
- Language design: The language is purposefully designed to be easily understood and simple.
- Package management: Go merges the modern day workflow with open source projects to manage external packages. Support is provided in the tooling to get external packages and publish one’s own packages with easy commands.
- Concurrency: It’s easy to implement a concurrent system with Go, which offers valuable concurrency primitives.
- Fast compilation: Go run command is used to fire the Go program. This makes the overall compilation of the code process faster.
- Fast execution: Because of the fast compilation of code across operating systems, the speed of page loads increase.
Applications developed in Go
- Docker
- Openshift
- Kubernetes
- Dropbox
- Netflix
- InfluxDB
