Companies decide the best language for their business by figuring out what their project needs. Both languages come with garbage collectors and multithreading support and are renowned for their use in server-side web applications.
Java is quite in an established position, whereas Golang, new in the market, is well known for its efficiency, making it perfect for processor-intensive operations. Beginners who want to kick start their careers can figure out what to choose as their first scripting language. This tutorial will elaborate on Golang and Java on various parameters and provide you with enough information to decide what best fits your needs. Now, you will begin this Golang vs Java tutorial.
Now, start with the introduction to Golang.
What Is Golang?
Golang is an open-source programming language launched by Google back in 2009.
The Go programming language was born to carry away all the excess baggage found in languages such as C++. It comes with goroutines, strong security, and some standard libraries. Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson designed a procedural, compiled, and statically typed language to reduce the complexity of managing the infrastructure and codebases within Google. It has goroutines, strong security, and some standard libraries.
Now, you will get introduced to the well-known Java.
What Is Java?
Java has been known since 1995 and James Gosling developed it at Sun Microsystems.
It is a statically typed, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language. Java possesses a virtual machine to interpret code. The Java Virtual Machine breaks down the code into bytecode and then compiles it quickly at runtime. Java once was a popular language for server-side applications, but now it's competing with new era languages in this segment. But its use cases are vast, from desktop to web applications, cell phones to the Internet, data science, and machine learning applications.
Comparison Between Golang and Java
The parameters you’ll be looking for in Golang vs Java are:
- Popularity
- Performance
- Ease of Coding
- Cross-Platform Development
- Memory Management
Golang vs. Java: Popularity
To date, Java is the most widely used server-side language. You will see Java competing with Python, Go, and many more. Java surpasses Go in terms of popularity.
Both Java and Go communities are supportive and passionate. The new hands-on coding mainly chooses Go as their server-side language. Java has vast open-source data available online, plus the community is active with feedback anytime.
Golang is not behind, you will find many open-source libraries, code examples, and other useful Go coders actively supporting new adopters and providing feedback.
Now, move ahead and compare these two languages based on their Performance.
Golang vs. Java: Performance
When comparing Go with Java in terms of performance, Go surpasses Java.
This is mainly because of Java's virtual machine, which is critical for code compilation. Moreover, it allows Java to run on any platform.
On the other hand, Go does not need any virtual machine. It directly compiles the code into binary code before executing the program. Go’s memory management also has a part in its performance. Both possess garbage collection but Go has the upper hand with its no pause policy when dealing with extraneous objects.
Golang vs. Java: Ease of Coding
Golang is a procedural, compiled, and statically typed language which comes with a handful of libraries. Golang is easy to learn and perfect for beginners, and as a newer language, it offers better-optimized features and less time typing. Go code is more compact and doesn't have unnecessary parentheses in its syntax.
On the other hand, Java is an object-oriented language with many libraries. With its existence since 1995, you are presented with a lot of source code for reuse. Java, being an object-oriented language, offers great reusability and efficiency and it allows you to check your code at runtime for errors, whereas it's not easy to do so in Go.
Now, see how they are compatible with Cross-Platform Development.
Golang vs. Java: Cross-Platform Development
When it comes to cross-platform development, the choice is mainly Java. With the JVM, Java is a step ahead as you have to compile the code through the JVM to run it on different platforms, making it time-consuming.
While Go works differently, it compiles binary files separately for each platform. Java is platform-independent.
Now it’s time to get to the next point of comparison: Memory Management.
Golang vs. Java: Memory Management
Both Go and Java have garbage collectors to help prevent memory leaks. Go makes good use of memory. The Generational garbage collectors slow down code execution, but Go's garbage collector is revamped with newer versions and is optimized to prevent garbage collection pauses.
Whereas Java uses a Generational garbage collector managed by a virtual machine. But here, Go's garbage collection method is more optimized with newer updates.
Conclusion
Both are powerful languages, but their use cases make their needs in different sectors. When you talk about microservices, Go is preferable. Java comes with vast libraries and support and is preferred for large systems and projects with a good timeline. Golang has a leaner learning curve than Java. It makes a good option when simplicity and memory management is a priority.
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