All Pythonistas should switch to Go… or okay, maybe just half
Why Google’s language is beating Python in web development, systems programming, and more
…With a thriving community
Because of its simplicity, Go is one of the most collaborative languages that exist these days. The times are over when programmers used to sit in their little cubicles and never meet others.
Now, we have StackExchange to solve all our coding problems. And we have Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, and more to stay in touch with our team. But modern languages are still tailored to the little nerd in the cubicle.
Go changes that. Despite being twenty years younger than Python, it has a vibrant community.
So it comes as no surprise that they put respect, openness, and friendliness atop theircode of conduct. While other languages, like Python or C, also have comparable community statements, there is less emphasis on these basic values.
So it’s no surprise that the community plays an explicit role in the annual Go surveys — unlike in many other languages.
The data speaks for itself
According to the2020 Go survey, Google’s language is mostly used for web development, network, and systems programming. The landscape for Python looks pretty similar:
The only striking difference is how much Python is used for data analysis and machine learning. And on these domains, otherhot new languagesare emerging.
Apart from that, you can see that many of Python’s usages could be replaced by Go. That includes 50% in web development, 38% in system administration and DevOps, and 19% in network programming. Even if you assume that many developers do all three of these jobs, you can safely assume that half the Pythonistas are doing things that they could do in Go.
Indeed, developers are aware of the huge potential that Go offers. According toHackerrank, about a third of all programmers wanted to learn Go in 2020.
The trend is real — and since Go is dead easy to learn, we should see a shift from Python to Go in the next few years. For most companies — especially those that are not as big and well-funded as Dropbox or Medium — rewriting all their code to Go will be too expensive. But for new projects, you should at least try it.
At the biggest companies, developers are already building their success with Go. When will you?
This article was written byAri Jouryand was originally published onTowards Data Science. You canread ithere.
Story byAri Joury
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