Which programming languages are most appropriate for use in the cloud? That question, in essence, is the topic of discussion for the twelfth episode of The New Stack at Scale podcast, now live onSoundCloud and iTunes.
The format of this episode is a little different. First, The New Stack’s Scott Fulton presents a special segment on programming languages, particularly Go, in a cloud-native environment, with Red Hat Principal Software Engineer Vincent Batts, as well as Lead Software Engineer Chris Haupt and Product Manager Victor Soares from New Relic.
Then host Alex Williams (founder and editor in chief of The New Stack) and I are joined by “the famous Adron Hall,” a Portland-based developer working on issues related to scalability and deployment of large-scale systems, including DevOps
Static vs. dynamic programming languages
Scott’s segment [time code 1:51] points out the differences between dynamically typed and statically typed programming languages in the “cloud native ecosystem.” In particular, the segment talks about the rise of Go, for which New Relic has just released a new agent. (Be sure to read Ready? Steady. Go! Public Beta of Go Support Opens in New Relic APM.)
Scott notes that since it was originally developed for Google’s internal use, Go seems particularly well suited to “help developers looking to integrate static server-side development with dynamic client-side development” in cloud native environments. Even though the Go community has grown significantly as companies like New Relic use it to build new products and applications—including New Relic Infrastructure—Go hasn’t yet barged its way into most programming language top 10 rankings [18:08]. (For more information, see The Most Popular Programming Languages of 2016.)
What’s next for Go?
According to Adron and Neha [26:11], that’s partly because Go is a relatively new language, and developers may be waiting for build-outs of more mature tooling, including IDEs and specific frameworks. More important, though, according to Adron, many traditional companies outside the San Francisco/Seattle/Portland axis of new internet companies are not yet living in the cloud-native, polyglot world of microservices architectures, containers, and multiple single-purpose applications that Go helps enable.
To put it simply: “As goes cloud, so goes Go!”
Listen to the entire podcast for much more on Go and cloud-native environments, including how long it takes to “jump on the Go train.”
Fredric Paul