
## Why Java is chosen by enterprises

### Historical context

Initially developed by Sun Microsystems, Java was born out of an experimental project. The language, originally named Oak. was designed for use in embedded systems. However, the name Oak was soon found to be unsuitable for trademark protection, as it had already been used by numerous other companies. In a strategic move, Sun Microsystems renamed the language to Java, inspired by the coffee that the developers drank during their coding sessions. Java was then released for free online, and quickly gained popularity among developers.

Sun Microsystems recognized early on the commercial potential of Java. By promoting Java as a versatile and industry-standard language, Sun created a significant revenue stream from licensing fees, services, and software sales. The company also leveraged its hardware business by ensuring that Java was natively supported on its Solaris operating system. This synergy between Java and Solaris meant that Sun could market its hardware as “Java-compatible,” thus driving both software and hardware sales.

Furthermore, Sun's promotion of Java as a language capable of running on any system, thanks to its "write once, run anywhere" capability, addressed a long-standing issue of software incompatibility across different platforms. This feature was especially appealing to enterprises, which often operate in diverse technological environments.

The introduction of Java EE (now Jakarta EE) in December 1999 was a pivotal moment, providing a comprehensive set of technologies and APIs designed specifically for large-scale, distributed, transactional, and mission-critical applications. This suite of tools further cemented Java's place in the enterprise software world, offering a robust framework for developing and deploying complex applications.

### Why Java is an enterprise programming language

- Enterprise applications are rarely standalone; they often comprise multiple interacting systems that must communicate seamlessly. Java excels in **supporting both synchronous and asynchronous messaging**. The language natively supports communication formats such as XML, JSON, and Protocol Buffers (Protobuf), which are integral to facilitating data exchange between applications and services.
- With the growing trend towards web-based interfaces, enterprise applications need to provide **robust web interactions**. Java's ecosystem includes extensive libraries and frameworks for developing web applications and web services. Technologies like JavaServer Pages (JSP), Servlets, and frameworks such as Spring and Jakarta EE (formerly Java EE) enable developers to create scalable and secure web applications, crucial for today’s browser-based enterprise solutions.
- Data is the backbone of enterprise applications, and the ability to interact with various databases is crucial. Java **provides high-quality drivers** for both relational databases (RDBMS) and NoSQL databases.
- Security is a critical concern for enterprises, and Java’s emphasis on safety helps mitigate risks. Unlike languages like C and C++, which are prone to memory management issues such as buffer overflows and dangling pointers, Java **is designed to be memory-safe**.
- Managing user access and authentication efficiently is vital for enterprise systems. Java **integrates well with various authentication and authorization protocols**, including LDAP, Active Directory, SAML, and OAuth. These integrations facilitate centralized management of user identities and permissions, streamlining access control across the enterprise.
- Java **benefits from a large talent pool**, as it is widely taught in academic institutions and has extensive community support. This widespread adoption **makes it easier for enterprises to hire qualified developers** and **leverage the collective knowledge** of a large Java community.
- Enterprises require the flexibility to host applications on various platforms, and Java’s "write once, run anywhere" principle plays a crucial role here. Java applications **can be deployed across different operating systems and cloud environments**, such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. This flexibility allows businesses to select the most cost-effective and stable hosting solutions and adapt as their needs evolve.
- Ongoing maintenance and performance monitoring are critical for enterprise applications. Java **supports a wide range of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools**, including ElasticAPM and DataDog, which help in tracking application health and performance. Furthermore, Java’s static typing and compilation process make it **easier to refactor code and identify issues before deployment**, enhancing the overall maintainability of applications.
- Java **boasts a rich ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, tools, and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)**. This extensive support accelerates development processes and enhances productivity by providing developers with pre-built solutions and utilities.

### Why Java and not C/C++

Even though C/C++ is considered faster than Java in almost every benchmark, Java is still more popular because:

- Java is easier to use. This results in shorter development time.
- Java is slower than C/C++, but still fast enough for most use cases. As most applications spend time waiting for I/O and network calls to finish, the run speed of a programming language isn't a primary concern in most cases.
- Java is memory-safe, and doesn't require memory management thanks to its garbage collector.
- Java is platform-independent. Thanks to the JVM, you can run Java software on various platforms.

=> For these reasons, Java gradually becomes a popular language, and is widely used among enterprises.

#### Citations

- BSCAL. _"Sun Launches Promotion Of Java"_, Financial Times Limited 1997, Nov 07 1997. [Link](https://www.business-standard.com/article/specials/sun-launches-promotion-of-java-197110701089_1.html)
- Philip Elmer-Dewitt. _"Why Sun’s Java is hot"_, Time USA, January 22, 1996. [Link](https://time.com/archive/6728450/why-suns-java-is-hot/)
- Paul Pacheco. _"What makes a programming language an enterprise programming language"_, Quora, 2022. [Link](https://www.quora.com/What-makes-a-programming-language-an-enterprise-programming-language)
- Joey DeFrancesco. _"If C++ is faster than Java, how come Java is used in every enterprise application?"_, Quora, 2020. [Link](https://www.quora.com/If-C-is-faster-than-Java-how-come-Java-is-used-in-every-enterprise-application/answer/Joey-DeFrancesco?ch=10&oid=89079315&share=c530e7de&srid=sm2B&target_type=answer)
- Trausti Thor Johannsson. _"If C++ is faster than Java, how come Java is used in every enterprise application?"_, Quora, March 6, 2024. [Link](https://www.quora.com/If-C-is-faster-than-Java-how-come-Java-is-used-in-every-enterprise-application/answer/Trausti-Thor-Johannsson?ch=10&oid=1477743744452601&share=57fb3215&srid=sm2B&target_type=answer)


Java has been widely adopted as the primary programming language for enterprise-level software development, emphasizing its platform independence, robust ecosystem, and extensive libraries. This choice aims to enhance scalability, ensure long-term support, and leverage Java's strong object-oriented programming principles in large-scale enterprise applications.

Why enterprise chose Java


## Why go

### Historical context

The Go programming language was developed at Google by Rob Pike, Robert Griesemer, and Ken Thompson. Rob Pike’s frustration with slow C++ compilation times led him to discuss the issue with Robert Griesemer, and Ken Thompson, working nearby, joined in. Their collaboration aimed to address the inefficiencies they faced with existing languages in Google’s large-scale environment.

Google’s software infrastructure, involving millions of lines of code and extensive use of C++, Java, and Python, required a language that balanced efficient compilation, fast execution, and ease of use. The existing languages fell short, prompting the team to create Go, which began as a 20% project in September 2007. By January 2008, work on the initial compiler started, and Go was open-sourced in November 2009. It reached its first stable release in March 2012.

Go was designed to improve software development efficiency and scalability at Google. It focused on addressing issues like slow compilation and cumbersome programming practices to enhance productivity and simplify management of large codebases. The language’s design emphasizes practical software engineering solutions over theoretical language research.

### What go offers

Go, also known as Golang, stands out as an ideal choice for an enterprise programming language. These are a few of Go’s strong points, which makes it possible for this language to be chosen among enterprises:

- **Simple and easy to learn:** Go is designed to be straightforward. Its language features are minimal but effective, allowing developers to grasp and use them quickly. With just a few days of study, developers can become proficient in Go, making it easy to onboard new team members and maintain consistent coding standards across a team.
- **Fast compilation and execution:** One of Go's biggest advantages is its fast compilation time. Unlike languages like C++ or Java, which can be slow to compile, Go produces binaries quickly. This means you spend less time waiting for your code to build and more time actually writing and improving it. Additionally, Go binaries run as fully optimized native code, meaning they start up fast and use CPU cores efficiently.
- **Easy maintenance and collaboration:** Go promotes code simplicity and clarity. Its standardized formatting and idiomatic ways of doing things make code easy to read and understand. This consistency reduces the cognitive load on developers, making it easier to review, debug, and collaborate on code. Go’s toolchain also supports automated code formatting and refactoring.
- **No runtime dependencies:** Go applications are standalone binaries, which means they don't rely on external runtimes or libraries. This results in significantly smaller Docker images compared to languages like Java or Node.js. Deployment is also simplified because you don’t need to worry about installing additional software or managing runtime versions on your servers.
- **Explicit error handling:** Go takes a different approach to error handling by requiring developers to handle errors explicitly, making error management clear and predictable. This explicitness helps in identifying and addressing issues more effectively, making your applications more reliable.
- **Cross-platform compatibility:** Go’s runtime is lightweight and designed to be portable across various platforms, including macOS, Linux, and Windows.
- **Modern object-oriented features:** Go embraces modern object-oriented principles while avoiding problematic features like inheritance. Instead, it supports composition, which provides better flexibility and scalability. This makes it easier for developers that are already familiar with OOP to switch to Go.
- **Future-Proof:** Go is designed with forward compatibility in mind. Software written in Go will continue to work with newer versions of the language, making it easier to upgrade and benefit from performance and security improvements over time.

### In which scenarios can go do better than Java

- **When building small to medium-sized services:** Because Go has no virtual machine, huge platform libraries, or a sophisticated garbage collector, and it compiles directly to machine code and supports static linking, Go has a very fast load times and very efficient resource usage. This makes it very easy to quickly spin up a new service with good performance. But when it comes to building large and complex services, Java is a better choice as it has more features and better support, along with a more "concrete" code structure.
- **When building cloud-native, serverless applications:** Because of Go's simplicity and performance, a service written in Go takes minimal time to be spun up compared to those written in Java. This makes it ideal to use Go for building serverless applications, in which the cold start time is usually a problem worth considering.
- **When doing extensive concurrent programming:** Both Golang and Java provide support for concurrent programming. With Java, you can only manage green threads through JVM, which inevitably suffer from context switching and fixed stack size. Go, however, shines in this area with its goroutines and channels. Goroutines are essentially lightweight threads that are managed by the Go runtime, allowing developers to write highly concurrent code easily. This makes Go an excellent choice for applications that require efficient handling of thousands of simultaneous tasks.

### Conclusion

To conclude, when it comes to picking a language for application development, Go is a viable option for enterprises. However, it is not likely that Go will completely replace Java, simply because there is no strong reason and enough benefits for companies to migrate entirely from Java to Go. Java is mostly used for developing Android mobile applications, data processing and transforming, and building applications with complex requirements which are heavily reliant on Java's vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. Go is more suitable for building small to medium services, serverless applications, and gives a higher performance when doing concurrent programming. Both languages excel in different areas, and can be used in tandem to build high-performance and reliable applications.

### Citations

- Team Veltris. _"Golang: A Key Programming Language in Future Enterprise Application Development"_, Veltris Blog, December 9, 2019. [Link](https://www.veltris.com/blogs/digital-engineering/why-go-lang-future-enterprise-application-development/)
- Nikhilbhide. _"Golang: A Programming Language for Modern Enterprise Applications"_, Medium, May 25, 2021. [Link](https://faun.pub/golang-a-programming-language-for-modern-enterprise-applications-b117f64d00f6)
- Victor Björklund. _"Will golang replace Java?"_, JawDropping.io, March 1, 2022. [Link](https://jawdropping.io/blog/golang-replace-java/)
- Rob Pike. _"Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering"_, Google Inc, October 25, 2012. [Link](https://go.dev/talks/2012/splash.article)
- Technoidentity. _"Opinion: Go vs Java Microservices"_, Technoidentity. [Link](https://www.technoidentity.com/insights/opinion-go-vs-java-microservices/)
- Russell Cohen. _"Why you can have millions of Goroutines but only thousands of Java Threads"_, RCoh's Blog, April 12, 2018. [Link](https://rcoh.me/posts/why-you-can-have-a-million-go-routines-but-only-1000-java-threads/)


An exploration of the reasons why Go is gaining traction as a preferred programming language for enterprise-level software development, including its simplicity, efficiency, and robust standard library.

Why go?

Profiling in Go is a powerful tool that can help you identify and fix the subtle issues in your code quickly and efficiently. In this article, we'll explore the world of profiling in Go and show you how you can use it to catch all the issues in your code.