Golang vs Java: Which is Better for Building Modern Web Services?

A Thorough Comparison of Two Popular Backend Languages

Golang and Java are two of the most widely used and in-demand programming languages among backend developers and engineers.

Java has reigned as king for many years, but the new kid on the block, Golang, has rapidly gained popularity over the last decade. This raises the question - which language is better suited for building modern, scalable web services and APIs?

This in-depth post will provide a comprehensive feature-by-feature comparison of Golang vs Java to help you decide which language may be a better fit for your next project.

A Brief History of Golang and Java

First, let's quickly recap the history and origins of each language.

The Creation of Java

Java was created in the early 1990s by James Gosling and others at Sun Microsystems. The key design goals were portability, efficiency, and ease of development. Java was conceived as a "write once, run anywhere" language that could run on any device or operating system.

The first public version was released in 1996. Java quickly became popular for building web applications and enterprise software. Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010 and continues to maintain Java today. It has grown into one of the most widely used programming languages in the world.

The Genesis of Golang

Golang (or Go) is a much newer open source programming language first launched by Google in 2009. It was created by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson.

Their goal was to combine the ease of dynamically typed interpreted languages with the performance and safety of statically typed compiled languages. The creators of Go aimed to build a modern language optimized for networked systems, ease of programming, and taking full advantage of multi-core processors.

While Java has decades of history, Golang has rapidly gained developers' attention as a viable alternative backend language since its launch. Now let's compare them in detail across important categories.

Simplicity and Beginner Friendliness

Two key attributes of any programming language are simplicity and ease of onboarding for new developers.

Java's Complexity

Java is renowned for its verbosity. The sheer size of the language and its APIs can overwhelm beginners. Constructs like checked exceptions add complexity for engineers coming from languages like Python or JavaScript.

The fact that libraries come bundled in monolithic JAR files obscures what code is actually being executed. Configuration via XML files is common in Java ecosystems. The numerous tools and infrastructure required for even simple Java programs can create cognitive overhead.

While these attributes provide flexibility and power, they reduce Java's simplicity for newcomers. Experienced developers must pass on institutional knowledge on how to use the language and avoid footguns.

Golang's Focus on Simplicity

In contrast, from day one Golang was designed with simplicity as a first-class goal. The language syntax itself is compact and easy to learn. The standard library and conventions embrace "the Go way" without extraneous configurability.

For example, code is always formatted automatically with gofmt, eliminating debates over styles. Cross-compilation and dependency management are built in. Programs are constructed by compiling a single "main" package, not linking complex webs of JARs.

These constraints reduce flexibility but dramatically improve simplicity and teachability. Developers can remain focused on business problems rather than language understanding.

Overall, Golang provides a much shallower learning curve for programming newcomers and junior engineers. The simplicity allows engineers to collaborate efficiently from a shared vocabulary.

Performance and Efficiency

For typical enterprise applications, raw computational performance is less important today than networking capabilities, request throughput, and efficient resource usage. Golang and Java offer interesting contrasts in these areas.

Heavier JavaProcesses

Java code typically runs within the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which provides portability across operating systems. However, the JVM incurs a non-zero cost at runtime. Java processes also tend to utilize more memory due to JVM overhead and garbage collection requirements.

For low-traffic services, this overhead is negligible. But for high-volume microservices, the additional resources required per Java process can add up quickly, especially when considering the cost of cloud computing resources.

Lean and Efficient Golang

Golang compiles directly to standalone native binaries. This allows Golang services to start up faster and run with less memory and computational overhead.

Golang's goroutines provide lightweight threads that incur less overhead than JVM threads. The built-in garbage collection and concurrency primitives are highly optimized. Together, these attributes allow Golang services to handle more concurrent requests with fewer computing resources.

While both languages allow engineering highly performant applications in absolute terms, Golang has some advantages for today's latency-sensitive and resource-efficient cloud applications.

Networking and Concurrency

Modern web services are all about networking. Request concurrency and parallelism are vital capabilities.

Java's Threads and Callbacks

Java utilizes threads for concurrency along with callbacks/futures for asynchronous operations. ThreadPoolExecutor allows tuning thread pools to avoid over-provisioning OS threads. But threads still incur overhead and require care to avoid issues like race conditions.

Callbacks are ubiquitous for asynchronous operations like I/O. But "callback hell" can quickly become complex and hard to read when chaining many asynchronous operations.

While Java provides the basic capabilities required, building highly concurrent and non-blocking I/O code remains challenging.

Golang's Goroutines and Channels

Golang was designed from the start for concurrency and networking. Goroutines provide cheap and extremely scalable concurrency. Channels gracefully handle message passing and data sharing between goroutines.

The builtin net/http package provides a high-performance HTTP server and client. Interfaces like net.Listener enable building highly non-blocking network code.

Golang feels naturally concurrent and non-blocking. Concurrency primitives like channels handle common pitfalls like deadlocks at the language level.

This makes it straightforward to build highly parallelized, asynchronous services in Golang.

Safety and Reliability

For enterprise usage, programming languages must provide capabilities to catch bugs early and write reliable software.

Java's Strict Typing and Custom Analysis

Java's strong static type system catches entire categories of errors during compilation that might otherwise result in runtime crashes. Eclipse and other Java IDEs provide further advanced analysis of code via plugins.

Large Java codebases often use additional strict rules enforced at build time by tools like Checkstyle, PMD, FindBugs and ErrorProne. But these require separate configuration and integration.

While Java provides solid capabilities for reliability, they come at the cost of additional tools and configuration. Strict enforcement of custom rules requires explicit integration into the development workflow.

Golang's Built-In Guardrails

Golang also provides strict static typing to catch bugs during compilation. But further, its design philosophy enforces semantic and stylistic consistency:

• Gofmt automatically standardizes code formatting and layout.

• Tools like golint and go vet perform static analysis on code.

• The compiler enforces match of method signatures and interface implementations.

Rather than allowing flexibility then limiting via custom rules, Golang is strict by default to improve consistency across codebases.

Golang also provides built-in support for documentation, testing, and profiling. Together these attributes allow engineering reliable software without requiring extensive additional tooling and rules.

Maturity and Community

Given its historical prevalence, Java has an enormous advantage over newer languages like Golang in terms of third-party code and community resources.

Java's Mature Ecosystem

After powering enterprise software for decades, Java boasts mature and feature-rich libraries for practically any purpose. Name a function, and there's almost certainly a Java framework or library to handle it.

StackOverflow contains hundreds of thousands of questions and answers on Java topics. Java jobs remain plentiful, and Java developers can build on generations of community knowledge.

For organizations already invested in Java, the availability of skills and components provides motivation for sticking with it.

Golang's Growth Trajectory

In contrast, Golang is still a relative newcomer. It has fewer third-party libraries and frameworks compared to Java, though top projects like gRPC help close the gap.

Since Golang is newer, it also has a smaller (though rapidly growing) community of engineers contributing code and documentation. There are fewer Golang jobs, books, and courses than Java counterparts.

However, Golang adoption has accelerated across major tech companies like Uber, Dropbox, Google, and Amazon. StackOverflow questions and GitHub projects show hockey-stick growth. And Golang skills are increasingly sought after by employers.

While the maturity gap remains, Golang is gaining momentum among modern engineering organizations.

Use Cases and Industry Adoption

The popularity of a language also depends heavily on its perceived use cases and industry adoption.

Java for Enterprise Software

For decades, Java has been the premiere choice for enterprise software and backend business logic. It powers a huge proportion of applications across banking, insurance, retail, and other traditional industries.

Within tech companies, Java frequently handles core business functions like billing, ERP, CRM, and data pipelines. Due to large existing codebases and available skills, Java persists as the safe, default choice for enterprise software, especially at non-tech organizations.

Golang for Cloud-Native Apps

Golang's stars have risen quickly among tech companies building modern cloud-native applications. Its baked-in concurrency makes Go ideal for backend microservices deployed across networks and containers.

Go has been adopted by cloud infrastructure providers like AWS, GCP, Cloudflare, and DigitalOcean to build their platforms and tooling. Companies like Dropbox, Twitch, Uber, Medium, and SoundCloud use Golang extensively for their services and APIs.

Golang provides better development ergonomics for today's DevOps patterns like continuous delivery. Its performance characteristics and small memory footprint also suit modern containerized deployment.

The Rise of Golang for Startups

As a result of these technical advantages, Golang has become the most popular backend language for startups according to surveys. Companies building cloud-native apps or APIs from scratch gravitate toward Go, while Java prevails in mature enterprises with legacy systems.

Key Differences and Tradeoffs

Let's recap the key differences between the languages and their tradeoffs:

• Simplicity: Golang features a cleaner, more consistent syntax and "the Go way" of writing programs. Java offers tremendous configurability at the cost of complexity.

• Performance: Golang compiles to efficient native binaries with cheap concurrency. Java runs on the JVM with more overhead but tunable performance.

• Concurrency: Golang provides channels and goroutines for effortless network programming. Java uses classic shared memory threads with callbacks.

• Reliability: Golang enforces consistency with gofmt, vet, lint. Java allows flexibility, custom rules required.

• Maturity: Java has far more libraries and community resources. Golang gaining momentum rapidly.

• Use cases: Java prevails for enterprise software, Golang preferred for cloud-native apps.

Overall, while Java provides unmatched configurability, Golang offers simplicity and "it just works" ergonomics. Both languages have merits depending on the context and use case.

Should You Use Golang or Java For Your Next Project?

So when should you choose Golang vs Java for an upcoming software project? Here are some key considerations:

Consider Go For:

• Cloud-native, containerized applications

• Microservices architectures

• Public APIs and services

• Highly concurrent real-time apps

• Startups and greenfield projects

• Building dev tools and SaaS products

Java Works Well For:

• Traditional enterprises

• Monolithic legacy applications

• Business and backend processes

• Android development

• Projects with existing Java code

Key Factors To Consider:

• Available skillsets of your team

• Required third-party libraries

• Cloud vs bare metal deployments

• Startup vs enterprise context

• Legacy code and technical debt

Conclusion

Java and Golang each have their advantages which make them suitable for different categories of backend applications.

For brand new projects, especially in high-scale cloud environments, Golang tends to provide better agility, performance, and development velocity.

But Java remains better suited for extremely complex enterprise systems and situations where legacy code or skills outweigh other technical considerations.

Thankfully, services built with either language can interoperate, so picking one does not necessarily lock you in forever. For example, Golang services can call Java business logic via REST or gRPC APIs.

Therefore, the choice between Golang vs Java should consider your unique context, priorities, and constraints to determine the best path forward. And both languages will likely continue playing important roles in backend development for years to come.