Introduction

Greetings for the day Infected Engineers!!

Golang is becoming increasingly popular day by day. There are a lot of open source libraries available and many companies are using Golang for their products. Google, Uber, and Netflix are a few of them.

However, Golang is a programming language and no programming language is perfect. It is not something like one language fit for all solutions. Golang is no different, and you should not use it to build everything.

If you want to do everything using Golang, that’s another part of the story because, yes it is possible but should we do it?? that’s something that makes a difference.

Today, we will discuss what we can build with Golang, and what are the things we should not build with Go.

Let’s dive in!!

Web Applications / Microservices

The very first is everyone’s favorite, Web Development. Golang is a great choice for web development as it’s faster and more performant than many other languages out there.

The standard library contains everything inbuilt that you may require to develop a web application and to complete some tedious tasks with ease it also has a few great web frameworks, Gin, Beego, and Revel.

Plus, it also has a built-in web server, making it super easy to get your app up and running.

What next, do you need a templating engine, HTML, JSON support, or something similar? The good news is, Go covered that too.

Its built-in HTML templating system is simple and easy to use but powerful at the same time, which is great for developers who are just starting out.

Distributed Network Services

Next, we have distributed network services. Go is perfect for building scalable network services, thanks to its support for Concurrency and Channels.

These features make it easy to write code that can handle multiple tasks at once, without any hiccups.

And because Golang has efficient memory management and easy-to-use networking libraries you won’t have to worry about your code slowing down or crashing under heavy load.

Golang includes HTTP, TCP, and UDP protocols in its standard library, making it a breeze to work with these protocols right out of the box.

Finally, don’t forget why Google developed Golang, to solve some of the problems they were facing with their existing infrastructure and it won’t be breaking news if I say, that the system had Distributed Network Services.

Cloud Native Development

Next, the most popular nowadays is Cloud Native Development. This is all about building applications that can run seamlessly in cloud environments, and Golang is a fantastic language for doing that.

With Golang, you can easily develop microservices that are lightweight, fast, and easy to maintain. And, when it comes to deployment, Golang plays very well with Docker and Kubernetes.

Golang is perfect for Cloud Native Development, thanks to the great ecosystem and Golang features we have discussed many times such as

• Performance (fast)
• Easy Concurrency Model
• Security
• Efficient Garbage Collection
• Ease by Cross Compilation

DevOps Tools

DevOps tools are all about building tools that help developers and operations teams work together more efficiently.

Its ability to handle the complexities of distributed systems and networks with ease is the reason why Golang has been chosen over other languages to develop DevOps tools.

There are several DevOps tools written in Golang, the most popular are Docker, and Kubernetes used for containerization and orchestration respectively.

Other examples of DevOps tools written in Golang are:

• Prometheus
• Grafana
• Helm
• Consul
• Vault

System Programming

Golang is an excellent choice for system programming due to its efficiency, low latency, and efficient memory management. Though, some of you may not agree upon this and find Rust is a better option for system programming that is a completely different discussion.

Golang comes with a rich set of standard library packages that make it easy to perform low-level tasks. Such as io or os packages can be used to interact with file system and operating system’s tasks respectively.

Other examples are syscall and net package. syscall contains an interface to low-level operating system primitives.

Block Chain Clients

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that is used to create decentralized applications and digital currencies. Golang has become a popular language for building blockchain clients due to its performance, efficiency, and low latency.

Here are some popular blockchain clients built with Golang:

1. Geth
2. Tendermint Core
3. Cosmos SDK
4. Hyperledger Fabric

CLI Utilities

Command Line Interface (CLI) utilities are programs that run in a terminal. These tools provide developers with a way to interact with their systems and perform tasks quickly and efficiently.

Here are some of the popular CLI tools & libraries:

1. Cobra Cobra is a popular CLI library developed using Golang. It provides developers with a simple and easy-to-use framework for building CLI applications.
2. Docker CLI This utility program allows developers to interact with docker engine. You can use this in entire life cycle of your containerization application.
3. Kubectl Similarly, we have Kubectl that can be used to perform operations on Kubernetes platform. The main purpose of Kubectl is to provide developers with a means to directly communicate with Kubernetes API.

Where shouldn’t build using Golang

As you have seen there are many domains where you can use Golang as your primary language but as we said, no programming language is perfect and Golang is no different.

Golang is bad choice for Embedded Systems, Game Development, Data Science, and Machine Learning following reasons:

• When it comes to the size of output binary Golang is bulkier than C and Rust
• Golang has garbage collection which makes it slow compared to others
• Logging can be expensive in Golang using standard Println()
• Lack of matured libraries, don’t get me wrong Golang has some great open-source libraries but those are not mature as compared to the libraries in other languages.
• The most important logical reason could be because Golang is not building keeping these in mind and is better suitable for distributed computing and web application servers

Summary

Golang is awesome you can develop microservices with Go and efficient concurrent programs. Microservices, CLI Tools, and distributed systems are few examples for which Golang is best suitable.

Still, there are few application domains where using Go can be a bad choice such as embedded systems, game development, and data science.

However, Life and Software Engineering is more or less similar. There are no hard and fast rules. You can use Go for any of your applications if that gets the job done.

When it comes to the question should you do it? It starts tales of discussions and logical reasons to answer why and why you should do it.