IME, there are two main differences between go and java:
1) go is more "batteries included". Modules, linting, testing, and much more are all part of the standard cli. Also, the go stdlib has a ton of stuff; in java, there is almost always a well-built third party library, but that requires you to find and learn more things instead of just reaching for stdlib every time.
2) golang is "newer" and "more refined". this is pretty subjective, but golang seems to have fewer features and the features are more well-planned. It's a more "compact" or "ergonomic" language. Whereas java has built up a lot of different features and not all of them are great. You can always ignore the java features you don't like ofc, but this is still a bit of cognitive overhead and increased learning time.
There are surprisingly few languages in this category, especially if you limit consideration to statically typed. Go, C#, Swift? Nim, Crystal? F#? Kotlin?
Go is not my favorite language, but it really is exceptional in terms of its effective utilitarian design.
Eh, imo the go libraries still aren't up to par with out of the box java libraries. Like there's still no Set class, nor the equivalent of Map.keys. yeah they're easy to write but that's still not an included battery.
Also, while the cli to add stuff is useful, there's still nothing to the level of maven or gradle for dependency management, and I usually find myself doing some fun stuff with `find -execdir` for module management.
Different strokes for different folks though. Java (really, kotlin) still makes a ton of sense for backend to me given how the jvm is architecture independent and you don't have to make tradeoffs/switch to graal if it's a long lived service.
Golang is nice, love it, but it's still got a bit to grow. I'm just happy they added modules and generics. I don't think it's a matter of being 'well thought out' as much as it's a simple language that cares a lot about simplicity and backwards compatibility and has iterated ever since. For my the killer app isn't go routines so much as you can produce a binary that's resilient even to shared/dynamically linked libraries in all platforms, which is awesome for portability independent of environment. No more gcc vs clang vs msvc headaches, no more incompatible shared libraries, no more wrong version of jvm or a bad python modules path etc.
Oh, also java had like a 15 year headstart on golang, and it wasn't until java 8 that many of my biggest complaints were addressed. And yeah stuff like apache commons +log4j+mockito/junit are pretty much required dependencies, and maven/gradle aren't language native.
The best STL is probably python imo but even that doesn't support a proper heap/priority queue inplementation. For data structures specifically I think java/kotlin has the best STL. All of this ignoring .NET or apple platforms.
I generally agree with what you are saying. Although I wouldn’t hold out Maven as a paragon. I used to make my living untangling pom.xml files. I don’t think anybody is feeding their family helping people with go.mod messes — although I wish somebody would do that for kubernetes.
Yup! Lots of good stuff in the go/x libraries, happy map.Keys is graduating.
Also totally agreed on maven not being an ideal, or even lovable dependency management system, but trust me that there are absolutely people spending too much time wrangling go.mod files, especially in open source where go.mod files cross repo boundaries (and thus consolidated test automation).
I typically do a bunch of git reset --hard's as I iterate on my find -exec to run the golang cli commands for module upgrades (for whenever rennovate fails). I like how it's much easier to experiment with over maven (maybe I just didn't know maven well enough), but it's still definitely a headache.
There is also https://github.com/hashicorp/go-set which includes HashSet and TreeSet implementations for types with custom hashing functions, and orderable data respectively.
FWIW, I think versions of java from the last 5ish years feel both "newer" and "more refined" than go.
But I do think go and java are very comparable languages. To me, go's advantage over java is more about use-case; go is the clear choice for little cli tools, because it's pretty far off the beaten path to coax java to start up quickly enough for this. This is the sweet spot for go, IMO.
As someone who isn't super proficient in Java I usually find Java daunting to get started with full of buckets of "meta" issues like in my other comment.
What JVM do I use? Does it matter?
Does it matter what version I install, what if I have to install/manage multiple versions?
If I want to write a web service can I use vanilla Java stdlib or do I have to use Spring or some framework? If I use Spring, do I have to get into the weeds of dependency injection and other complexity to actually get my app off the ground?
With Go, none of those questions exist. I install the latest Go, create a main.go file, I use net/http and I'm off to the races.
Besides what neonsunset points out for .NET world, where alongside C#, we get the pleasure to enjoy F#, VB and C++/CLI, it is relatively easy for Java.
When one doesn't know, just like with Go, one picks up the reference implementation => OpenJDK.
For basic stuff, the standard library also has you covered in the jdk.httpserver module.
By the way, where is the Swing equivalent on Go's standard library?
I agree with Go being simpler, but modern Java and Spring Boot is also fine. Backend programmers are spoiled with riches nowadays with all the completely workable options we have.
