Netease CEO Zhou Feng has endorsed the Go programming language, highlighting its strengths. He believes that Go inherits the flexible, simple, and efficient design principles of C. Additionally, Go offers high productivity, and it provides well-chosen solutions for complex tasks through its built-in features and standard libraries.
As a relatively new programming language—only eight years old compared to C’s 40-year history and Java’s 20 years—Go has gained popularity among developers. Many internet companies are now using Go in their production systems, especially in cloud services, and this trend is growing. In discussions with colleagues recently, I felt it was worth sharing my perspective on why Go is such an appealing choice.
First, Go is a strong successor to the C language's philosophy of flexibility, simplicity, and efficiency. As a system engineer, I always recommend studying Linux kernel code. The same code can run across a wide range of devices—from small headsets to high-end servers—and can be built with a single command. This kind of flexibility and clarity is largely due to C’s elegant design, which makes it “just right†in terms of complexity. In contrast, C++ often feels overly complicated, with poor returns on investment for new features (even though C++11 introduced many improvements). Go follows in C’s footsteps but simplifies things further, like eliminating pointer arithmetic while enhancing concurrency and memory management. With only 25 keywords, Go maintains a clean and minimal syntax, making it easy to learn and use.
Second, Go boosts developer productivity. One example is its lack of build files like Makefiles or XML configurations. Instead, Go uses a "convention over configuration" approach, where simply running "go build" automatically detects the project structure. Another example is cgo, which allows developers to embed C code directly into Go files, making integration much smoother than Java’s JNI, which requires generating .h files and compiling DLLs or .so files manually. These features save time and reduce overhead, making Go a great choice for fast development cycles.
Third, Go offers excellent solutions for complex problems through its language features and standard libraries. For instance, goroutines and channels provide a more intuitive and powerful way to handle concurrency compared to threads and streams. It also includes robust support for JSON, XML, HTTP, and regular expressions in its standard library. Unlike Swift, which introduces a large number of features that can feel overwhelming, Go is very selective and restrained, focusing on what truly matters. This makes Go feel more focused and less cluttered.
The following is a translation of Paul Hoehne’s article titled "The Subtle Productivity of Golang," which discusses similar ideas.
I admit I’m fascinated by new programming languages, even if they’re not entirely new to me. But what really interests me is a language that enhances productivity. A year ago, I tried Go and found a level of comfort and efficiency I hadn’t experienced in years. While other languages can do similar things, Go feels like a language I can fully understand and work with without constantly referring to documentation or external tools.
As languages evolve, they tend to become more complex. Features like concurrency in C++14 or generics in Java and C# have added layers of complexity. C has around 30 keywords, C# has 64, Java has 53, and C++ has about 80. Go, on the other hand, has just 25. Keywords may not be the only measure of complexity, but they do shape the mental load on developers. Writing in C is often more tedious than in Java, yet the number of keywords gives a sense of conceptual space that developers must navigate.
In graduate school, I used vi to write C code without auto-complete features and rarely needed to open manuals. I could remember basic system calls like open, read, and write. That kind of productivity comes from being able to “cache everything†in your mind. I can’t imagine writing Java without an IDE that supports auto-completion or real-time syntax checking. Java is a big language with a huge ecosystem, but it lacks the built-in convenience that Go offers, like a ready-to-use HTTP server.
Writing Go in a simple text editor is effortless. It has modern features like concurrency, good Unicode support, and built-in HTTP capabilities. It feels as comfortable as C but as productive as Java. For some, the idea of a “comfortable†language might sound odd, but when it comes to tools, a user-friendly one is often the best.
In the long run, I believe Go will become the go-to language for containerized data centers. It compiles into standalone binaries, meaning no need for runtime environments like Java or Python. You can deploy a Go app in a standard Linux container without extra dependencies. It also supports cross-compilation for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and ARM targets, making deployment straightforward.
So why isn’t everyone using Go? Partly because it’s still new. Many companies are still running legacy systems like PowerBuilder or JDK 6. Even today, some apps might still rely on COBOL. Go 1.0 is only five years old, so it’s still finding its place. Java and C# have been around longer and met real-world needs, reducing application development costs. In the late 90s, people used C++ and Visual Basic, but debugging issues like COM errors or memory corruption took a lot of time. Replacing Java with Go isn’t about punishing yourself, but as we move toward container-based environments, Go’s lightweight nature could give it an edge.
As more developers adopt Go, they’ll find that keeping the entire language and key libraries in their heads leads to a subtle form of productivity. This is something that larger, more complex languages often lack.
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