Java vs Golang Programming Language – Hey guys, welcome to my next blog on programming languages. Today, we would be debating about the famous Java and the so much speculated Google’s Go Programming. We all know what Java is. Let me give a recap for the beginners out there. First things first, what is Java? Java is a high-level programming language, but due to its nature which has more in common with C or C++, some people even refer to it as a low-level tool.
To make it simple, a Java bytecode includes instructions which asks the program to perform a specific task. But so does Golang or any other programming language, then whats the difference? The thing is the structure of the code, the simplicity or the complicity, the compactness of the code and the speed per bytecodes or how much seconds it takes to perform a specific task; these are the things that make a lot of difference. For example, if you write a “hello world” code in Java; it would take up 3-4 lines of code.
The same thing can be done in python in say, around in 1 line. Astonished? You should be. But the thing here also includes efficiency. If I write large programs in Java, it will probably be quicker when it gets executed, but that wont be the same if I use python. Python is much easier to write, but is slow when compared to Java.
But, I am not here to talk about python, am I? I am here to talk about Golang and Java. So, this was just an intro for the newbies out there who wants to know why comparing programming languages are important. So, lets have a look what these two languages: Go and Java have under the table.
Java vs Golang Programming Language Examples:
Before we proceed to actually calculate the differences between these two languages, lets take a look at the piece of code with similar examples.
Calculation of all integers from 1 to 10 in Java:
package calcint;
public class newint {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int intval;
int last_val = 11;
for (intval = 0; intval < last_val; intval++) {
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System.out.println(“Loop Value = “ + intval);
}
}
}
Now, lets take a look at the same example in Golang:
import “fmt”
func calcint() {
for i := 1; i <= 10; i++ {
fmt.Println(i)
}
Yup, that’s it. No so hard, is it. When I ran these two I actually got the results pretty amazing. I ran Java in the JVM and Go in its basic interpreter, and to my shock Go was actually faster than Java. I though maybe GO is faster than java in small pieces of code, so I dug in a bit deeper.
What exactly is Golang?
Yup. I actually should have told you this at the very start, but I couldn’t resist myself showing the difference between the two. Go was written by the Google developers and was actually developed to provide fast responses and development, much better support for modern computing techniques, and a much clear human-visible code than other systems languages like C or C++. If you are a C or C++ programmer, then you will probably find GO much better than the likes of it.
Go was intended primarily to be a systems language, like C or C++, which are fully capable for supporting front end application’s development.
Why was Go actually developed when we have systems languages such as Java and C?
Yeah. That is indeed a good question. The answer is something like this. Few years ago, before Go was developed, the developers at Google wanted a language with some efficient libraries to improvise the support for latest computing technologies something similar to C++ or Java. But the thing was, if you write more libraries for languages that already have so much to begin with, and that too without any built-in support for latest computing techs, it simply wont work. As a matter of fact, that seemed like a totally idiotic idea.
So, these questions started to become nightmares for them. And then came the idea of building a totally new language from scratch. The developers of Go were always too tired to select from either ease in development or the execution of code and the efficiency of its compilation. So, they thought why can they create something which has everything in particular? Thus, Go was developed to provide superior and quick development, fast compilation along with good efficiency.
Besides, if this is not enough, the developers of GO decided to keep a BSD style license to this language, thus making it open source.
Now, comes the Inevitable Question..
So, finally now comes the question of the decade. Why develop Go when you have C++ or Java? And what exactly is the difference between the two. So, now lets take a deeper look in the similarities and their differences.
Both Java and Go have the functions concept though they are slightly different when compared altogether. In Java, if someone is referring to a function, they are actually referring to the specific body of the code, which include the name, the return type and the parameters rather than just the function itself. Similarly, if a persons refers to a function within the class, its actually referred to the function which is a member or even a method sometimes.
The thing is if you have used Java previously, you will probably find GO easier to begin with, but if its vice versa; you will probably find yourself in trouble wondering the whys and why nots in Java or C. Besides, the syntax of GO is very different from the likes of C or Java. If you are used to the method of using data types, list identifiers and paramters in Java, then you probably would have to find GO extremely weird and uncomfortable.
Even the interface of GO is fairly different from that of Java. It allows multiple return values from methods and functions and it does not allow implicit type casting. If you try to force coerce these things, you will eventually end up with a compiler error. You need to specifically let Golang know when you want to switch between types.
Is Golang object oriented?
Now, this my friend, is a tough question to answer. Go doesn’t have many object oriented features like full encapsulation or inheritance or even polymorphism. Infact, GO doesn’t support inheritance to begin with. As a matter of fact, Go implements interfaces and allows for something called as “pseudo-inheritance”. I cannot actually explain how this works without actually showing you a problem. So, I will most likely have to leave this part off for my tutorials rather than over here.
But that’s not it. If you have studied Java in detail, then you know that the type hierarchies do cause a lot of headache with overhead compilation and multiple inheritance. But the developers of GO, rather found a shortcut through this gap. The developers actually opted out from adding these features to the GO. Trust me, and that worked.
People actually loved this a lot and this saved GO programmers from a lot of hassle. Here, there are no pointer arithmetic unlike object oriented languages. Pointer arithmetics if not used properly, leads to weird code sets and fatal software crashes. Thus even this feature was completely discarded in GO.
Memory usage in GO v/s Java
Memory cleanup in Go is somewhat similar to that of Java here. It has automatic garbage collection. Thus, the hassle of explicitly freeing up of memory or deletion of certain apps was indeed escaped. The Go developers intended to pry open the efficiency in garbage collection. Besides these, they made GO in such a way that it now utilizes the simple mark and sweep garbage collection method, thus making it more efficient.
There is even no function overloading supported in GO. Thus, this saves go from language fragility and doesn’t cause a mess when sweeping up the memory like it does in a ugly way in Java.
Conclusion
Nuf said, I think these differences are enough to let you know the importance of each language. But as I said previously, GO is not exactly what an object oriented language looks like, but you can still it is possible to program Go in an object oriented way though it doesn’t support full encapsulation or polymorphism.
Though GO overlaps Java in a lot of places, it can never replace JAVA. Java is like a king whereas Go is an adviser to the king. Thus the end result is either Java or GO, they both are needed when the situation arises.
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