Golang, also known as Go, is a computer programming language developed by Google. Inventors of Golang - Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson - wanted to create a language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable and efficient software. Go is designed as a systems programming language for large, distributed systems and highly-scalable network servers to solve internal issues at Google.

Go is becoming increasingly popular in several aspects: (1) Cloud Computing (Docker, Kubernetes), (2) Database (cockroachdb, influxdb), (3) Distributed Computing/Blockchain (etcd, Ethereum), (4) Networking (traefik), (5) Operating Systems (Ethos), (6) Web/App Development (a wide variety of companies using Golang to build their web/app services - Companies Using Golang) and many more.

The decision to choose a specific technology for a project is generally based on the objectives of the project and the price one technology may cost. At East Agile, we focus on Go as the API backend for highly scalable microservices base web applications. Golang could be a fit for highly complicated applications, where the emphasis is on performance and scalability. However, it does take longer and so cost more than more mature platforms like RoR because there are not as many plug and play tools. So, when the priority is placed on speed delivery, Python (Diango) or Ruby (Ruby on Rails) is the best option to choose. 

Go has become increasingly popular in the Microservice community over the past few years thanks to its features and supports from the ecosystem. Many web giants, including Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, PayPal, The Guardian, have successfully adopted the microservice architecture. It was designed to overcome the disadvantages of traditional monolithic architectures in a big complex application. This, in turn, comes with a high cost of high complexity system: modeling services, integration/deployment (CI/CD), testing, monitoring, etc. Another challenge may also come about handling distributed applications and defining their service scope because one wrong decision could lead to a very complex and hard to maintain system. Other options for building a microservice based application include Python, Node.js and Ruby on Rails. 

We believe providing a menu of flexible technologies and being transparent about costs and tradeoffs of each option are the best start to help our clients get the highest quality services from our ecosystem. It is all about choosing wisely and we’re excited to start the journey with you! 

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Contact us for more information. We’ll quickly get back to you with the information you need.