Go is a programming language, designed by Google as a systems programming language. It is notable as among the few languages that support concurrency without data races and for its use of minimal memory-management techniques.
In this article, I will explore what Go is meant to be used for, how it can benefit your programing experience in today's world, and which online coding schools offer classes for this new technology.
Why Go?
What is Go meant to be used for? Google released Go in 2009, as a successor to C and C++, two languages that were written for a time when computers could be run on just about anything with a CPU. With the advent of 64-bit computing and multicore processors, this approach has become less attractive. In fact, Google has removed the ability to compile Go programs for 32-bit architectures from their official binary distribution.
With Go, memory management is automatic, and there are no data races. It also has a garbage collector for automatic memory management. When garbage collection pauses the running program, it’s called a stop-the-world garbage collection. This means that writing correct concurrent programming code is easier in Go than in many other languages, particularly C and C++.
Is it called Go or Golang?
Go is actually Go, like the golfer, not Golang. This is a common source of confusion among people who are not programmers. The “golang” spelling is used by almost everyone except Google, but it’s effectively wrong.
What is the Golang used for?
As a systems programming language, Go is meant for writing system software, including operating systems and networking software. It’s also being used as a scripting language for web applications by companies like Heroku and Tumblr.
This makes Go a replacement for C or C++, but with many more features. For instance, it has garbage collection and can support concurrency because of that. It also has SIMD instructions (single instruction, multiple data) which allow hardware acceleration of certain kinds of programs provide by Cloud Chalktalk.
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