Why I Reach for Go First¶

When starting a new backend project, Go is almost always my first choice. Here's why.

It's Fast — Both to Run and to Write¶

Go compiles to a native binary and starts up near-instantly. For services that need to handle high throughput or low latency, this matters. But more than raw speed, Go is fast to write. The language is small and consistent, so there's rarely much ambiguity about how to express something.

Concurrency Is a First-Class Citizen¶

Goroutines and channels make concurrent programming approachable. Spinning up thousands of goroutines is cheap, and the model keeps the code readable compared to callback-heavy alternatives.

Great Tooling Out of the Box¶

go fmt, go test, go build — zero configuration needed to get a consistent, working project. The standard library covers a huge surface area, which means fewer dependencies and simpler dependency graphs.

When I Reach for Something Else¶

Go isn't always the answer. For performance-critical, low-level work I'll turn to Rust. For quick scripting or glue code, Python or JavaScript gets the job done faster. But for a new backend service? Go every time.

What's your go-to language for backend work? I'd love to hear — reach out on LinkedIn.