Comparison between Go & Node.js

Go: Go or Golang is a statically typed, open-source procedural-oriented programming language. It was designed at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson, and it was released on the 10th of November 2009. The language was designed using C programming language so the syntax of the language is quite similar to C language. However, Golang has some additional features like memory safety, garbage collection, concurrency, etc. There are many big organizations that use the Go language like Uber, DailyMotion, Soundcloud, Medium, Docker, Intel, Baidu, Twitch, Google itself, and many more. For creating static websites, server development, web scraping, and designing backend Golang is mostly preferred. But due to the being slower and verbose it is still not so popular.

Advantages Of Using Golang:

• It is easy to learn as Go language has simple syntax, and also it is designed using C programming language.
• It is a fast language as compilation is quick and generated binary code is too less.
• It has the ability to support concurrency as goroutine function and channel make it possible.
• Syntax of Golang is neat as well as very easy to understand.
• Google's active support is there for Golang.
• Excellent documentation.

Example:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

   fmt.Println("GeeksforGeeks")

}

Output:

GeeksforGeeks

Some important points about Go:

1. Go is a statically typed procedural-oriented programming language.
2. It was developed at Google in 2009.
3. It has nice features like memory safety, concurrency, and garbage collection.
4. Go is slower due to the verbose nature of the language.
5. Go is lighter comparatively as it is based on C and C++.
6. In Go the compile-time and runtime errors are to be handled differently, and also they have to implement explicit error checking
7. The concurrency feature of go makes it suitable for large projects. This is achieved by using Goroutines in Go.
8. Golang is comparatively less popular and has less community support which makes it tough to learn.
9. There are many big organizations which use Go language like Uber, DailyMotion, Soundcloud, Medium, Docker, Intel, Baidu, Twitch, Google itself, and many more.

NodeJS: NodeJS is an open-source JavaScript tool that was created by Ryan Dahl and was released in 2009. It was created using JavaScript, CoffeeScript, and C++. It is built on Google Chrome’s Javascript Engine(V8) which is a runtime engine that allows the programmer to launch the backend as well as the frontend using JavaScript. The interesting point is it is not considered as a framework nor as a programming language. It used to be very popular but over the years it has lost the hype being overshadowed by new trendy languages and frameworks. It is most suitable for non-blocking operations that do not have heavy algorithms that consume more cycles. This makes NodeJS very fast. Tech giants like Netflix, Uber, eBay, Walmart, Medium, LinkedIn, PayPal, NASA, etc use NodeJS.

Example:

const http = require("http");
const hostname = "127.0.0.1";
const port = 3000;
const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.statusCode = 200;
  res.setHeader("Content-Type", "text/plain");

  // Visit http://localhost:3000 to see message GeeksforGeeks

  res.end("GeeksforGeeks");
});

server.listen(port, hostname, () => {
  console.log(`Server running at http://${hostname}:${port}/`);
});

Output:

GeeksforGeeks

Advantages Of Using NodeJS:

• Easy to learn as it has concise, clean syntax.
• Easy scalability,  scalable network applications can be developed as it is built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime platform.
• Run time open-source development platform so it has a large and active Community.
• Parallel execution provides high performance
• Advantage of caching
• Full-stack JavaScript

Some important points about NodeJS:

1. NodeJS is free and open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that is based on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
2. In the year 2009, it was developed by Ryan Dahl.
3. It allows the user to launch the backend as well as the frontend using JavaScript.
4. NodeJS is very fast when used with lighter algorithms and non-blocking operations.
5. NodeJS is written using JavaScript, CoffeeScript, and C++ hence it is comparatively slower
6. In NodeJS just like JavaScript, the errors are handled by using a try-catch block which is way more convenient.
7. NodeJS works linearly so it is more suitable for lighter and small projects.
8. NodeJS has a large community base supporting the framework. Hence, it is easier to learn.
9. Tech giants like Netflix, Uber, eBay, Walmart, Medium, LinkedIn, PayPal, NASA, etc use NodeJS.

Difference between GO and NodeJS: