Ultimate Guide To Introduction To Golang

If you like to learn Go (Golang), this tutorial will lead you to the path. But if you have any doubts or are unsure about learning the language, this tutorial will tell you about the facts, stats, and figures withdrawn by the Go developers. Go emerged to solve the increasing complexity of the codebases within Google. After its emergence, many cloud-based and server-side applications adopted it. It is used in developing command-line tools and embraced in artificial intelligence and data science.

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What Is Golang?

Go (also known as Golang) is an open-source programming language developed by Google. It is a statically typed compiled language. Go supports concurrent programming, i.e., it allows running multiple processes simultaneously. This is achieved using channels, goroutines, etc. Go language has garbage collection, which does memory management and allows the deferred execution of functions. It also supports networked and multicore computing.

You can run your first code without any setup on the playground provided at golang.org.

History of Go

The Go programming language was born because of the complexity of managing the infrastructure and codebases within Google. Go was designed by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. Go was designed at Google in 2007 and was announced to the public in 2009, and it was made open source in 2012, with the release of version 1.0

Features of Golang

• Flexible - Go is simple, easy to read, and learn.
• Concurrency - Go allows multiple processes to run simultaneously.
• Fast Output - Go comes with a very quick compilation time.
• Library - Go comes with a vast standard library.
• Garbage collection - Go has this key feature. It gives control to memory allocation and has significantly reduced latency in newer versions. 

Why Learn Golang?

Easy to Use and Learn

Golang is easy to use and understand. It has gained popularity in the top 20 programming languages. Go has a linear learning curve that appeals to novice programmers. If someone already has hands-on C# or C++, learning Go for them should be more accessible because of its striking similarities to C.

Community and Documentation

You can find the documentation on the official website golang.org. Go has solid and easy-to-read documentation. Apart from documentation, Go also has a supportive and active community. You can use the hashtag #golang whenever got stuck on Twitter to reach out to the community.

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Impressive Standard Library

Go users have a standard library packed with the language, which reduces the effort of importing complex secondary libraries.

Go's standard library is vast but not confusing, that is, without the issue of conflicting function names. One of Go's best contributions to programming is it offers a more straightforward way of integrating data structures into code blocks. 

Strong Security

Simple code is safe and more secure than complicated code. As Go is a statically typed language, Go users don’t have to debug a lot to identify errors which is the case with many dynamic languages and their large number of variable types. Plus, the inclusion of a garbage collector also helps prevent memory leaks.

Attractive Wages

According to a survey conducted by StackOverflow, Go developers are the third-highest paid after Perl and Scala. Due to Go's increasing popularity every year, this figure will continue to rise.

Popular IDE’s Used by Golang Programmers

• GoLand: GoLand is an IDE by JetBrains to provide an ergonomic environment for Go development.
• Sublime Text: Sublime Text is a commercial source code editor that supports many programming languages and markup languages. Install the GoSublime plugin through package control that provides Go code completion and other IDE-like features.
• GoClipse: An Eclipse extension adds IDE functionality for the Go programming language.
• Vim-go: Vim-go Vim is often called a "programmer's editor". Plugins add Go language support for Vim.
• Visual Studio Code: Using the Go extension for Visual Studio Code, you get features like IntelliSense, code navigation, symbol search, testing, debugging, and many more to help you in Go development. You can install the Go extension from the VS Code Marketplace.

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Companies Using Golang

• Uber Microservices - This ride-hailing platform uses Go within its Microservices.
• Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system used to automate software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally, Google designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation currently maintains it.
• Dropbox - Dropbox is a file hosting service. They have migrated some major components from Python to Go.
• Netflix - Netflix is the most popular OTT platform. They have used Go to develop their server architecture.
• Twitch - Twitch is a live video streaming platform that uses Go for many of the busiest systems.
• SoundCloud - SoundCloud uses Go to perform static analysis in real-time, which is possible because of static typing and fast compilation.

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Conclusion

Various industries have adopted Golang from robotics to the gaming industry. It is used in microcontroller programming. The Go community has helped Go become popular in the masses and they have embedded newer methods with the progression of Go versions. For visual understanding, you can watch the following video tutorial.

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Happy learning!