3 posts tagged with "Go"

Preface​

Today's heroes in this world are only you and me. -- Cao Cao, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"

For programmers who have been working in the IT industry for many years, if asked about the most mainstream backend programming language in China, I believe most would say Java. This isn't surprising, as Java has existed for over 30 years, has a massive user base and ecosystem, and seems to hold an absolute dominant position in the software engineering field. However, as ancient wisdom says: "Those who win the hearts of the people win the world." The programming language with the most users isn't necessarily the most beloved by developers. According to StackOverflow's 2021 survey of 82,914 developers on programming language satisfaction, only 47% liked Java, ranking it beyond 20th place, barely higher than PHP, C, and COBOL. On the other hand, we can see from the survey results that C#, often called the "knockoff Java," actually achieved 62% satisfaction among developers, 15% higher than Java. Although C#'s satisfaction still has a considerable gap compared to Rust and TypeScript, we can see that C# as an alternative programming language to Java is gradually gaining advantages in development efficiency, deployment convenience, and documentation completeness. Due to work requirements, I've used both C# and Java to develop numerous projects, giving me some understanding of their similarities, differences, advantages, and disadvantages. I believe there are good reasons why C# is more popular among developers than Java - it offers a great development experience.

Due to length constraints, the complete introduction to C# principles and practical applications (i.e., why I recommend using C# to build large-scale backend applications) will be split into a series of articles. This series will deeply analyze this "young" programming language from dimensions such as syntax features, development patterns, ecosystem, deployment and building, using the cross-platform framework .NET Core as an example to introduce how to build large-scale backend applications with C#.

This article is the first in the C# series, primarily introducing some modern syntax features of C# and how they improve development efficiency.

Introduction​

Those outside the city want to get in, those inside the city want to get out. -- Qian Zhongshu "Fortress Besieged"

With the continuous popularity of Container Orchestration, Microservices, Cloud Technology and other trends in the IT industry, Golang (Go language, abbreviated as Go), born at Google in 2009, is increasingly welcomed and sought after by software engineers, becoming today's hottest backend programming language. In the list of software projects developed with Golang, there are star-level products like Docker (container technology) and Kubernetes (container orchestration) that have disrupted the entire IT industry, as well as powerful and practical well-known projects like Prometheus (monitoring system), Etcd (distributed storage), and InfluxDB (time-series database). Of course, Go language's application domains are by no means limited to containers and distributed systems. Today, many large internet companies are extensively using Golang to build backend Web applications, such as Toutiao, JD.com, Qiniu Cloud, etc. The web scraping field, long dominated by Python, is also being continuously challenged by Golang due to the rise of the simple and easy-to-use scraping framework Colly. Golang has become the programming language that most software engineers want to learn today. The image below shows relevant results from HackerRank's 2020 programmer skills survey.

So, is Go language really a lifesaver for backend developers? Can it effectively improve programmers' technical capabilities and development efficiency, thus helping them advance further in their careers? Is Go language really worth spending a lot of time learning in depth? This article will provide detailed introduction to Golang's language characteristics, its advantages and disadvantages, and applicable scenarios. With the above questions in mind, it will analyze various aspects of Go language to help programmers new to the IT industry and developers interested in Go to further understand this popular language.

Preface​

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

The world's most incomprehensible aspect is that it is comprehensible. -- Albert Einstein

Open-source has created today's thriving software industry. Open-source enables developers worldwide to collaborate on excellent utility projects, also known as "wheels," benefiting companies and individuals of all sizes while showcasing creators' and contributors' technical prowess. Many developers today extensively use open-source projects as third-party libraries or dependencies to complete development tasks faster and more efficiently.

I'm no exception. Recently, while refactoring the Crawlab frontend using Vue 3, I used the upgraded version of ElementUI developed by the Element team - the new UI framework Element Plus rebuilt for Vue 3. The Element team completely refactored Element Plus using Vue 3, fully embracing TypeScript. Compared to the previous Vue 2 version, it enriched some components while maintaining consistent styling and usage patterns. Some APIs even became more streamlined. Therefore, during the initial refactoring phase of Crawlab's frontend, I didn't encounter major obstacles. Combined with previous development experience, the development process felt smooth and familiar. However, the good times didn't last long. As the project continued developing, I encountered some technical difficulties. More precisely, I faced limitations from the Element Plus framework itself when implementing complex features. Although I eventually found ways to solve the problems, I deeply experienced the difficulties of hacking open-source project source code. Therefore, I'd like to take this opportunity to share my experience in mastering open-source code with readers.

This article will begin with my experience solving Element Plus problems, progressively discussing issues with open-source projects or frameworks, and further discussing methods and techniques for mastering open-source project source code, sharing thoughts on reading, understanding, and modifying source code. This article primarily focuses on methodology discussions without too many technical details, making it accessible to readers of any professional background.