Node JS vs Google’s Go – Which one is better?

When it comes to choosing the best among a plethora of advanced programming languages for mobile & web development, developers have a wide range of choices to get started. Google’s Go and Node.js are two of the technologies that are commonly used for backend programming by web developers. Both of these technologies are relatively new and gaining more popularity with every passing day and for some good reasons.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is a runtime environment for JS code execution. It is a server-side platform, which runs on various platforms, including Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Linux. It is a free, open-source programming server framework. Node.js provides a rich library of different JavaScript modules that simplify the web development process and compiles JavaScript code into native machine code through some complex optimizations.

Node.js runs on a cross-platform and open-source runtime environment to develop networking and server-side applications. Moreover, Node.js makes use of JavaScript and a lot of UI frameworks and libraries are using JavaScript/TypeScript such as Angular, React, VueJS, etc. which suggests the language is more engaging than others.

However, languages such as Go are superior options to Node.js when it comes to scalability and concurrency. This is because Node.js, being single-threaded, may lead to the inhibition of the event loop by the CPU-bound tasks that can further slow down a program. This would lead to a slow application performance.

Salient Features of Node.js

  • Open source: It has an open-source community. The Node.js community has produced many excellent modules to add additional capabilities to its applications.
  • Single-threaded: With event looping, it follows a single-threaded model.
  • License: Node.js has been released under the MIT license.
  • Extremely fast: Its library is very fast in code execution since it is built on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript Engine.
  • Highly Scalable: Event mechanism helps the server to respond in a non-blocking way this makes Node.js highly scalable.
  • No buffering: These applications simply output the data in chunks; Hence, Node.js applications never buffer any data. It cuts down the overall processing time while uploading audio and video files.
  • I/O is Asynchronous and Event-Driven: All APIs of Node.js library are non-blocking i.e. asynchronous. Therefore, the server never has to wait for an API to return data.

Application of Node.js

  1. It supports single-page applications.
  2. It is a data-intensive real-time application (DIRT).
  3. It has JSON APIs-based applications.
  4. It processes I/O bound applications.
  5. It supports data streaming.

What is Golang?

Golang also called Go is a free, open-source general-purpose programming language. The core structure of Golang is built on the basic principles of Python and C programming languages. With memory safety, garbage collection, and limited structural typing features, Go is one of the most popular programming languages.

Salient Features of Golang

  • Object-oriented: Golang uses structures as a replacement for classes. A structure may have many methods and properties defined on them.
  • Pointers: Golang has brought back pointers since it aims to provide a modern equivalent of the C language in some areas.  
  • Concurrency: Golang makes it extremely easy to implement a concurrent system by offering some great concurrency primitives. It supports this at the language level.
  • Compiler: The compiler on this platform is super fast. It is easily possible to compile a large Golang program within a few seconds.
  • Simplicity and Consistency: Golang is a relatively simple language. It is built with a very minimalistic approach.

Application of Go

  1. Learning curve
  2. Built-in testing and profiling framework
  3. Reflection
  4. Opinionatedness
  5. Culture
  6. GoDoc
  7. Static code analysis
  8. Race condition detection

Conclusion

Choosing a platform solely depends on the size of the project and the type of its development. It also depends on the developers and the kind of platform they would like to systematize. Both the platforms Golang and Node.js were developed for different uses & distinct purposes. 

Are you looking to build mobile and web applications faster? Confused between Node JS vs Google’s Go for your application development project? Choose the professional services of a renowned Mobile App Development Company like Cloud Analogy. The dedicated & highly experienced application developers at Cloud Analogy would help you build your app more effectively. Choose the leading Mobile App Development Company now!

Author: AJ

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