7 ms·

Like someone mentioned, it's hard to answer this in the general case. Factors to consider would be: a) are you dependent on the JVM and Java ecosystem? b) Are y

Like someone mentioned, it's hard to answer this in the general case. Factors to consider would be: a) are you dependent on the JVM and Java ecosystem? b) Are you already familiar/comfortable with Java/Scala? "Yes" answers to both of these might lean you towards Kotlin. c) is speed essential? d) are you doing systems programming as opposed to CRUD webapps?[1] These might lead you to Go. [1] I know you can do the latter in Go, but it's unclear that it's as easy/productive as in other langs currently (nor have I directly compared, say, Revel to other frameworks, so someone else is probably better qualified to answer this question.)

candiodari 9y ago
If you want speed, use golang ? Java (and kotlin) are faster than Go in almost all cases (except for startup time) (and even there difference is shrinking, plus you get a lot back for that startup time). C, if you must, is faster still, and C++ can be faster as well. As a quick (and inaccurate) rule, any program that runs longer than 10-20 seconds will be faster in Java than in Go.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  What about memory? I wouldn't run any kind of production Java web server with 256M RAM server. I've had impression that Golang is much less memory-dependant.
  - sebcat 9y ago
    Not sure about the most recent versions, but Go can run on MIPS platforms with 32MB RAM.
- skybrian 9y ago
  But if you care more about latency and predictable performance, Go's very low-latency GC is attractive.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    Not really. Golang provides "mostly" low latency, at the cost of everything else, most significantly throughput, and load. https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection-911ef4f8bd8e https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection-911ef4f8bd... TLDR: Go's GC will only be realtime as long as you use it only minimally. With tiny programs, that's fine of course. With larger programs, it will block for a looooong time. That's masked by the language making it very hard to write larger programs in the first place. For instance, by not having decent data structures (not even a tree, seriously ?) I guarantee if you actually use the GC, there comes a point where java runs circles around Go. Hell, there comes a point where the lua GC runs circles around the Go one. That point is a lot closer than you might think, and as a bad rule of thumb you should probably think of it like this: if any of cpu, mem, i/o goes >80% of the machine's capacity, Go will disappoint very badly compared to Java (GC using more memory, using more cpu, longer pauses, ...). But if all those values are at 2% of capacity, Go's runtime will perform better. Tradeoffs. Everything is tradeoffs. Go is not better than Java/JVM, it's worse. But a different set of tradeoffs means that there are circumstances where it'll beat the other set of tradeoffs. But "close to 0", Go will beat the JVM.
    - skybrian 9y ago
      There's no reason you can't write a tree in Go. Take a look at go/ast.
- msluyter 9y ago
  Hmm, I guess I was going of benchmarks such as these, which suggest Go is, well, faster some of the time? https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/go.html https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/go.html However, perhaps as you indicate these are including JVM startup time and thus tainting the results. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that Go was faster than Java, but it's been a couple of years since I've used either one, so I definitely may be off on that point.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Last time I checked, the maintainers of that game said the startup time is negligible.
- xyproto 9y ago
  Go is a language with at least two compilers. One of them is gcc (yes, gcc, since version 4.6). I doubt Go code compiled with gcc is much slower than C, and can't think of a reason why Java would be faster. "faster than Go" could mean any compiler
bacongobbler 9y ago
I've found low-level web servers (i.e. basic i/o) are really easy to implement in Go. CRUD webapps with an auth layer, database management layer, JSON serialization/deserialization layer etc. are certainly harder to write as you pointed out, but it's possible.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > JSON serialization/deserialization layer Why do you need a whole "layer" for this? I recently wrote a microservice in Go with a JSON-emitting RESTy API, and my JSON serialization layer is two functions for a total of 20 limes: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/0735bd6de4e49f900ab8d97aec88ac1beeeb9f55/pkg/api/core.go#L102-L135 https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/0735bd6de4e49f900ab8d97a... (ignore the unrelated function inbetween; I cannot select non-contiguous areas in GitHub source code listings)
  - int_19h 9y ago
    I think what OP means is a layer in a sense of mapping JSON to your own data types. You just invoke json.Marshal/Unmarshal here, which deserializes into maps and arrays of interface{} - i.e. effectively an untyped data structure.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      No, it doesn't. json.Un/Marshal understand all data types; you just need to annotate fields in structs with their JSON field names.
mike_hearn 9y ago
If speed is essential you'd use C++. But you could use Java too. There are useful benchmarks of server frameworks here: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ As you can see the top frameworks are all C++ or Java. A Java servlet based framework clocks in 3rd with 178k/sec. Go's first entry is at 10th place with 141k/sec. The next time go appears it's the "kami" framework with just 58k/sec - slower than nodejs!
logingone 9y ago
Go is being used quite a bit for crud. I've spent the last year at a big co where that's what it's used for. I think the old problem of the ambiguous word "systems" comes in here - op-systems vs ent-systems. Go is for ent-systems not op-systems. A lot of ent-systems are crud, including microservice hell where 95% of the program is boilerplate config, http, metrics, logging, crud, wrapping a couple of tiny functions that were mildly interesting to program.
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  You might want to uppercase your acronyms. "Crud" means "something dirty and disgusting" or "nonsense". CRUD has a very different meaning.

candiodari 9y ago

If you want speed, use golang ? Java (and kotlin) are faster than Go in almost all cases (except for startup time) (and even there difference is shrinking, plus you get a lot back for that startup time). C, if you must, is faster still, and C++ can be faster as well. As a quick (and inaccurate) rule, any program that runs longer than 10-20 seconds will be faster in Java than in Go.

vbezhenar 9y ago
What about memory? I wouldn't run any kind of production Java web server with 256M RAM server. I've had impression that Golang is much less memory-dependant.
- sebcat 9y ago
  Not sure about the most recent versions, but Go can run on MIPS platforms with 32MB RAM.
skybrian 9y ago
But if you care more about latency and predictable performance, Go's very low-latency GC is attractive.
- candiodari 9y ago
  Not really. Golang provides "mostly" low latency, at the cost of everything else, most significantly throughput, and load. https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection-911ef4f8bd8e https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection-911ef4f8bd... TLDR: Go's GC will only be realtime as long as you use it only minimally. With tiny programs, that's fine of course. With larger programs, it will block for a looooong time. That's masked by the language making it very hard to write larger programs in the first place. For instance, by not having decent data structures (not even a tree, seriously ?) I guarantee if you actually use the GC, there comes a point where java runs circles around Go. Hell, there comes a point where the lua GC runs circles around the Go one. That point is a lot closer than you might think, and as a bad rule of thumb you should probably think of it like this: if any of cpu, mem, i/o goes >80% of the machine's capacity, Go will disappoint very badly compared to Java (GC using more memory, using more cpu, longer pauses, ...). But if all those values are at 2% of capacity, Go's runtime will perform better. Tradeoffs. Everything is tradeoffs. Go is not better than Java/JVM, it's worse. But a different set of tradeoffs means that there are circumstances where it'll beat the other set of tradeoffs. But "close to 0", Go will beat the JVM.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    There's no reason you can't write a tree in Go. Take a look at go/ast.
msluyter 9y ago
Hmm, I guess I was going of benchmarks such as these, which suggest Go is, well, faster some of the time? https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/go.html https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/go.html However, perhaps as you indicate these are including JVM startup time and thus tainting the results. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that Go was faster than Java, but it's been a couple of years since I've used either one, so I definitely may be off on that point.
- weberc2 9y ago
  Last time I checked, the maintainers of that game said the startup time is negligible.
xyproto 9y ago
Go is a language with at least two compilers. One of them is gcc (yes, gcc, since version 4.6). I doubt Go code compiled with gcc is much slower than C, and can't think of a reason why Java would be faster. "faster than Go" could mean any compiler

bacongobbler 9y ago

I've found low-level web servers (i.e. basic i/o) are really easy to implement in Go. CRUD webapps with an auth layer, database management layer, JSON serialization/deserialization layer etc. are certainly harder to write as you pointed out, but it's possible.

majewsky 9y ago
> JSON serialization/deserialization layer Why do you need a whole "layer" for this? I recently wrote a microservice in Go with a JSON-emitting RESTy API, and my JSON serialization layer is two functions for a total of 20 limes: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/0735bd6de4e49f900ab8d97aec88ac1beeeb9f55/pkg/api/core.go#L102-L135 https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/0735bd6de4e49f900ab8d97a... (ignore the unrelated function inbetween; I cannot select non-contiguous areas in GitHub source code listings)
- int_19h 9y ago
  I think what OP means is a layer in a sense of mapping JSON to your own data types. You just invoke json.Marshal/Unmarshal here, which deserializes into maps and arrays of interface{} - i.e. effectively an untyped data structure.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    No, it doesn't. json.Un/Marshal understand all data types; you just need to annotate fields in structs with their JSON field names.

mike_hearn 9y ago

If speed is essential you'd use C++. But you could use Java too. There are useful benchmarks of server frameworks here: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ As you can see the top frameworks are all C++ or Java. A Java servlet based framework clocks in 3rd with 178k/sec. Go's first entry is at 10th place with 141k/sec. The next time go appears it's the "kami" framework with just 58k/sec - slower than nodejs!

logingone 9y ago

Go is being used quite a bit for crud. I've spent the last year at a big co where that's what it's used for. I think the old problem of the ambiguous word "systems" comes in here - op-systems vs ent-systems. Go is for ent-systems not op-systems. A lot of ent-systems are crud, including microservice hell where 95% of the program is boilerplate config, http, metrics, logging, crud, wrapping a couple of tiny functions that were mildly interesting to program.

lobster_johnson 9y ago
You might want to uppercase your acronyms. "Crud" means "something dirty and disgusting" or "nonsense". CRUD has a very different meaning.