Go vs. Java

I can honestly say I have enjoyed working with Java for quite some time now. I built up my expertise in software development working with backend technologies like EJB2, DB2, and Oracle over the last years at Spiral Scout. Over the years, I moved towards natural language processing-based bots including Spring Boot, Redis, RabbitMQ, Open NLP, IBM Watson, and UIMA. For years, my language of choice was Java and that has worked effectively, even being enjoyable to use at times.

Testing Out Go to Start

In early 2017, I took over a very interesting project that revolved around programming automated systems for monitoring and growing hydroponic plants. The original code base for the software incorporated Go gateways for three different systems — Windows, MacOS, and ARM.

Completely new to Go, my job quickly evolved into a mix of both learning and simultaneously implementing this new language as the project progressed. The challenge was daunting, especially because of the convoluted structure of the existing code base. Supporting a program with platform-specific parts written in CGo for three different operating systems essentially meant deploying, testing, and running maintenance for three different systems. In addition, the code was written with a singleton design pattern making the systems heavily interdependent, often unpredictable, and rather difficult to understand. In the end, I opted to engineer a new version of the gateway with a more Java-esque approach and that too ended up being rather ugly and confounding.

When I moved to Spiral Scout, where I currently serve as a tech lead for one of our biggest U.S. clients, I stopped trying to tap into my Java wheelhouse when developing with Go. Instead, I decided to embrace the language by developing in the most possible Go way and having fun with it. I found it to be an innovative and comprehensive language and our team still uses it daily for a variety of projects.

Like with any programming language, however, Go has its weak points and disadvantages, and I won’t lie, there are times where I really miss Java.

If my experience with programming has taught me anything, it’s that there is no silver bullet when it comes to software development. I’ll detail below how one traditional language and one new kid on the block worked in my experience.

#java #golang #java (programming lang... #programming & # design #golang development