Go Language: Learn its Key Components and Scope

Go Language: Learn its Key Components and Scope

Go language or in short GOLANG was designed by Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. It is a statically typed, compiled language with a complete description more than language C. The first version was released as a completely open source in March 2012.

Go language due to its open-source nature is very easy to build, simple, reliable, and efficient programming language. In different languages, there are many ways to solve the problem. Programmers can spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to solve it. Go, on the other hand, believes in fewer features with only one right way to solve the problem. This saves a lot of time and makes the large codebase easy to maintain. There are no expressive features in this because if you have such features, it typically adds expense.

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Components of GO

1. GO packages

Go is made of multiple packages. The package tells the Go compiler that the program is compiled as an executable one, rather than a shared library. It is the entry point for an application.

2. Workspace

A workspace in Go language is defined by the environment variable GOPATH. Any code you wish to write is to be written inside the workspace. Go will search for any packages inside the GOPATH directory, or the GOROOT directory, which is set by default when you install Go. GOROOT is the path where the GO is actually installed.

3. Number, String, and Boolean

Some of the supported number store types and that too in GO are ints, int8, int16, int32, int64, uint, uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64, uintptr. The string type basically stores a sequence of bytes. It is represented and declared with the keyword 'string'.

A boolean value is stored by using the keyword 'bool'.

Go also supports complex number type data types, which also can be declared with complex64 and complex128.

4. Arrays, Slices, and Maps

An array is a sequence of elements of the same data type. Arrays have a fixed length defined at the declaration, therefore, it cannot be expanded more than that. They also can be multidimensional. Arrays are limited for cases when the values of the array get changed in runtime. Arrays also don't provide the ability to get a sub-array. For this, Go has a data type which is called Slices.

Slices consist of a sequence of elements and are time expandable. Their declaration is similar to an array declaration. They can also be defined in the form of capacity and length and are also an abstraction to an array. They use an array as an underlying structure to work. A slice contains three components known as capacity, length, and a pointer to the underlying array. The capacity of a slice increases with the help of a copy function. An append function adds a value to the end of the array and also increases the capacity if needed.

Another way to improve the capacity of a slice is by using the copy function. all you need to do is to create another slice with a larger capacity and copy the previous slice to the newly created slice.

Talking about Maps, they are basically a data type in Go, which maps keys to values.

How can GO compete with other languages?

The scope for Go language is wide and there are some reasonable principles behind it.

Go follows the below-mentioned principles:

1. Clean and Simple

Go strives to keep things very small and beautiful. With only a few codes, it creates multiple functions and makes the language simple to use.

2. Concurrent

Go makes it very easy to “fire off” functions to be run as lightweight threads. These threads are called goroutines in Go. Goroutines perform channels communications either via shared state or via channels.

3.Fast

Compilation and execution are fast in GO. The main aim is to be as fast as C. Compilation time is measured in just seconds.

4. Safe

Explicit casting and strict rules when converting one type to another type, Go has a lot of garbage collection. GO takes care of all the safety and removes unwanted data to make it error-free.

5. Standard format

A Go program can be formatted in every possible way the programmers want, but an official format does exist.

6. Open Source

The Go license is completely open-source.

 

Hence, instead of going through various languages, Go just focuses on a few concepts which can directly resolve the problems. The main purpose of Go is to have simplicity and clarity in its code so that its programmers can understand and maintain it smoothly. Also, Go consists of some powerful features which lets one build some great applications. Ready to explore the language? Enquire in the comments below. 

Written By



Jasmine Bano

A writer with 9+ years of stained experience on paper. She's been into copywriting and content for advertisement with 20+ brands. Apart from the ad copies, she also writes blogs which, considering why you're reading this, makes perfect sense. She's best known for writing fiction, non-fiction, advertising copies, ad campaigns, and has won the best writer award from her former companies three times. She was also a semi-finalist for "Bumble's most influential women in India" in the year 2019. Apart from writing, you can find her running "Womeant" (a social initiative for women empowerment) and educating street kids to pass time.

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