Why golang was developed

Go (often referred to as Golang) was developed by Google. The key individuals behind the creation of Go were Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. The development of Go began in 2007, and it was officially announced to the public in November 2009.

Why Go Was Developed

The development of Go was driven by the desire to address several issues that the creators identified in the existing programming languages and the software development environment at Google. Here are the key motivations behind the creation of Go:

1. Concurrency:

   • At Google, many services needed to handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently. Existing languages like C++ and Java had concurrency models that were considered either too low-level or too cumbersome.
   • Go was designed with a lightweight concurrency model based on goroutines and channels, making it easier to write concurrent code.

2. Compilation Speed:

   • Large-scale codebases at Google could take a significant amount of time to compile, which slowed down the development process.
   • Go was designed to have fast compilation times, allowing developers to build and iterate on their code more quickly.

3. Simplicity and Readability:

   • The complexity of languages like C++ made them difficult to learn and use effectively, especially for new developers.
   • Go was designed with simplicity in mind, aiming to have a clear and concise syntax that is easy to read and write. The language avoids features that can lead to complex and hard-to-maintain code.

4. Performance:

   • Google needed a language that offered good performance, similar to what could be achieved with C or C++.
   • Go was designed to produce efficient machine code, making it suitable for performance-critical applications.

5. Memory Management:

   • Manual memory management in languages like C and C++ can lead to errors and vulnerabilities, such as memory leaks and buffer overflows.
   • Go includes garbage collection to manage memory automatically, reducing the likelihood of such errors while still providing good performance.

6. Standard Library:

   • The Go standard library is extensive and designed to support modern software development needs out of the box. This includes libraries for web servers, cryptography, file I/O, and more.
   • Having a robust standard library helps developers avoid the need for third-party dependencies for common tasks.

7. Tooling:

   • Go was designed with strong support for tooling from the beginning, including tools for formatting code (gofmt), testing, and managing dependencies.
   • The Go toolchain promotes good development practices and helps maintain a consistent code style across projects.