Node vs Golang – Everything You Need to Know in 2024

How do you build a successful mobile application? You may have a fantastic design and idea, but the prime pillar to develop a successful mobile app is its Back-end. The better it serves the business logic and performs all tasks effectively and efficiently, the better the outcome. 

The question arises which tech stack to consider for back-end development – especially when you have many options, including ASP.NET, PHP, NodeJS, and Golang. Within this diversity, making any decision without knowing essential facts about each of these technologies is risky and burdensome. 

Hence, to help you make the right choice, we will focus on two of the most promising back-end technologies – NodeJS vs Golang. You can consider them both as evolving languages but are popular in different projects.

Golang vs Node Let’s begin.

What is NodeJS?

NodeJS was created in 2009, and within two years, the first version got released to share open-source libraries. It is an open-source JavaScript framework that can run on different platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

NodeJS is built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It offers a rich set of libraries that can simplify web applications based on Node JS development.

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NodeJS was initially developed as a platform to execute JavaScript code. But today, it enables you to create code for both the front-end and back-end of a web application. Thus, making it a revolutionary web app programming language.

Achievements of NodeJS

• According to a TechOverFlow survey, NodeJS secured first place as the most commonly used in 2017 & 2018. 
• Netflix adopted NodeJS and observed a 70% reduction in its startup time.
• As per the State of JavaScript survey, 85% of respondents were happy to use NodeJS for developing JS-based web apps.

Advantages of Node JS

There are many benefits of Node JS. They are as follows:

Fast Processing and Event Model

V8, the virtual machine that the NodeJS framework uses to execute JavaScript, has JIT (Just In Time) compilation mechanism. That makes it easier for the framework to compile source code to machine code at run-time, resulting in higher execution speed.

The framework provides Node JS Developers the opportunity to design event-based, real-time applications through synchronizing the same language both on the client and server sides. It is highly considered for platforms associated with online gaming, video conferences, chats, etc., due to its asynchronous, non-blocking, and single-threaded nature. 

Robust Tech Stack

NodeJS is a standalone name in the server-side development industry that works on both the front-end and back-end. It enhances the developer experience and makes it easier for them to enjoy reliability, higher efficiency, and code reusability.

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Highly Extensible 

It implies that you can easily customize and extend NodeJS as per their project requirements. On one side, you can employ JSON for data exchange between client and web server, while on the other hand, you can build HTTP, DNS, TCP, etc., servers using the built-in APIs available with the NodeJS environment.

Real-Time Data Streaming 

The framework offers the option of non-blocking I/O systems and makes it easier for all the web and mobile software development companies to process numerous requests simultaneously. Thus, delivering better outcomes in real-time.

Caching 

NodeJS avails the facility of caching single modules. It makes sure that whenever you request the first module, it gets cached in real-time in the app memory. So, the back-end developers need not re-execute the code. The caching mechanism empowers the app to load pages and respond to requests swiftly and effectively. 

Are you looking to Hire Node JS Developers for your project? Then, we have a team of highly experienced and dedicated Node JS Developers to serve you. 

What is Golang?

Go programming language (Golang) is a product of Google. It was created out of need, like most of the innovations in the IT world. In other words, the developers at Google were not happy with existing solutions. So, they developed a language that would combine different languages’ advantages to achieve better performance. 

Golang is an open-source programming language with its core structure built based on principles of C for safety and Python for speed.

The framework involves limited garbage collection, memory safety features, and structural typing, resulting in avoiding a lot of features of modern programming languages. Thus, making the process of writing code much more efficient and easier. 

Achievements of Golang

• Within two years, Golang jumped from 65th most popular programming language to 17th on the list.
• It is among the top five “most-loved” programming languages, as per a Stack OverFlow survey.
• As per a Packtpub survey, Go is the fastest growing language on GitHub. 

Golang Advantages

There are numerous benefits of the Golang or Go language. They are as follows:

Clean Coding 

Golang is a statically typed, compiled language with a strict stylization. It is necessary for a web development company and mobile app development company to give more attention to their codes and make sure that the written codes are useful and accurate. Thus, facilitating you with an opportunity to understand and change the code better in the long run and clean coding. 

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Scalability 

Being developed by Google, the programming language is highly scalable. It helps the Golang Developers to manage multiple sub-tasks simultaneously, especially Goroutines and channels. 

Simple and Faster Development

The programming language offers ease and speed in the development process. It has a simple syntax-based upon functions – with no room for classes and types inheritance. Hence, it makes it easier for the developers to compile and launch their app solutions in the market at the earliest and get access to feedback for better outcomes. 

Garbage Collection 

Golang also provides you the facility of Garbage collection ( or Automatic Memory Management). The programming language has lowered its latency to less than 1ms by operating concurrently through various programs and employing a tricolor mark-and-sweep algorithm. 

Cross-Compiling

It is another essential feature that makes Go an excellent choice for server-side development. The Go compiler enables you to generate binaries that you can execute on different operating systems using a few simple commands. In other words, it empowers you to cross-compile the source code and runs it on multiple machines without installing it on foreign devices. Thus, making the deployment process smoother. 

NodeJS vs Golang Comparison

Now, as you have the necessary information about NodeJS and Go, let’s compare them based on various factors like scalability, error handling, performance, etc. 

Scalability and Concurrency 

A program can organize its execution into various separate flows and communicate within them. The technique is a great way to use the CPU efficiently and increase app performance. Concurrency is an important factor for enterprise-scale apps or apps that can handle thousands of requests at a time. The more concurrent an app, the less are its chances to crash under heavy load. 

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 As per Rob Pike, the Founder of Go, Go is an excellent tool for large software projects. With various channels and Goroutines, concurrency is a strong side of Go. Goroutines are functions or methods that run in parallel with other methods or procedures. They are light-weight (initial size is 4KB), compared to operating system threads that are initially 1MB. 

Go environment allows the developers to run thousands of Goroutines simultaneously without using much RAM. You can pass the information between two Goroutines via channels that hide the complexity and help you structure the programs in a maintainable way. As NodeJS is single-threaded, sometimes CPU-bound tasks block the event loop and slow down your program. Thus, resulting in a slow app and annoyed users.   

Performance  

Performance plays a significant role in an app’s loading and response times. Thus, it directly affects customer satisfaction with your app. Most developers claim that Go gives the same performance as C and C++, which is good. It has no virtual machine and compiles to machine code to execute fast without any warm-up time.

Plus, Go has a built-in garbage collector that identifies and monitors occupied memory that’s no longer required and frees it for reuse. It lowers the risk of security vulnerabilities due to code encapsulation and provides effective memory management.

Go is an ideal solution to build microservices due to Go apps’ tiny memory footprint and fast performance, along with the convenience of statically linked binaries. 

NodeJS is considered as one of the best back-end solutions due to several reasons:

• The framework inherited its asynchronous and non-blocking nature from JavaScript. It means that small tasks are performed in the background, and they do not affect the main thread.
• NodeJS uses the V8 engine, which is considered the fastest JavaScript engine to date.
• NodeJS code is easily reusable. It is crucial for event-based applications that update data in real time and is widely used for instant messaging, online gaming, and video chats. 

In 2013, PayPal switched from Java to NodeJS and shared its experience of using NodeJS. As they said, after migrating to NodeJS, their pages were served 200ms faster and their average response time decreased by 35%.

When it comes to raw performance, Go is the indisputable leader. But in real life, Go and NodeJS are equally useful when you talk about Go vs Node performance. To compare the NodeJS vs Golang performance, you can look at the synthetic tests by The Computer Language Benchmarks Game.

Tools 

Ready-made solutions help in the development and cut costs for web app development. A large variety of frameworks and development tools is another reason to choose NodeJS. It’s an event-based framework with a microservices architecture. Here, one application is divided into smaller modules with well-defined operational interfaces that help you add new components to your app.

Npm, standing for NodeJS package manager, is one of the best things about NodeJS. It consists of 8,00,000 ready-made ‘building blocks’ that can be installed and run hassle-free. But it would help if you choose them wisely. Even if the core technology is outstanding, npm lacks a well-structured list of blocks and may take time to find the right block.

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Go has a smaller number of tools than NodeJS as it has a standard full-fledged library with features that don’t need third-party support. On the other hand, Go does not have any built-in GUI library. The number of NodeJS tools may exceed the number of Go tools, but it does not have robust tools like Gofmit, GoMetaLiner, and Go Run.

Community 

Both NodeJS and Go are open-source platforms. It means all the communities are engaged in improving these languages, fixing bugs, and creating new protocols. Plus, both of them have repositories on GitHub. A large community means a lot of developers which makes it easier to find the right specialist.

NodeJS is a mature tool with a vibrant and large open-source community. The main motto of the NodeJS Foundation is to enable the widespread adoption of NodeJS. In the first year itself, the foundation formed a team of professionals responsible for security and developed a long-term support plan for improved stability. The Technical Steering Committee has 18 members, and the number of contributors exceeds 2000. 

GoDaddy, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NodeSource, and PayPal are active members of the NodeJS Foundation. Every year, the community organizes NodeJS Interactive, an event where developers announce new improvements and changes to NodeJS. To date, NodeJS has reached one billion downloads and 56,000 stars on GitHub.

The Go community is smaller, but it keeps growing every year. Google’s support is a big reason for migrating to Go. GopherCon which is held annually gathers Go developers from around the world to discuss new changes and opportunities. The conference led to an increasing number of developers interested in contributing to the Go community and projects. As per the Golang survey in 2017, 59% of respondents wanted to contribute to the Go community, up from 55% the previous year. 

Error Handling

NodeJS uses the traditional try-and-catch error method where errors are detected immediately when they occur. 

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On the other hand, Go separates run-time and compilation-time errors that are supposed to be handled alone. It raises difficulties for mobile app developers. But, the creators of Go are working hard on language evolution. Go developers announced that they started working on Go 2 in August 2018. The next version is likely to get additional support for error handling, read-only values, and some form of generics. It saves the developer’s time for debugging since it helps in finding errors faster.

Are you looking to Hire Golang Developers for your project? Then, we have a team of highly dedicated and efficient developers to serve you. 

Companies Using NodeJS and Golang

Every company would adopt new technologies to achieve faster performance and better quality in the Software Development Life Cycle. So, let’s look at the languages chosen by top companies for back-end development after accessing the NodeJS vs Golang comparison.

Companies Choose NodeJS

• Netflix
• Trello 
• LinkedIn
• PayPal
• eBay
• Medium 
• NASA
• Walmart

Companies Choose Golang 

• BBC
• Medium
• Google 
• Uber
• Basecamp
• Docker 
• Intel 
• Heroku 

Golang vs Node: The Conclusion

It’s quite hard to say whether NodeJS vs Golang is better as it depends on the app’s type and the characteristics that you want to develop. Every task requires the right tool, and Go and NodeJS are good at different things. 

Go is perfect for enterprise-scale projects and microservices that demand higher loads, while NodeJS has many ready-made solutions for almost all development challenges. So, you can quickly reduce the custom software development time.