Go vs GraalVM

Overview

Golang

Stacks24.0K

Followers13.9K

Votes3.3K

GitHub Stars130.7K

Forks18.4K

GraalVM

Stacks70

Followers76

Votes0

GitHub Stars21.3K

Forks1.8K

Go vs GraalVM: What are the differences?

Go is a statically-typed, compiled language known for its simplicity, efficiency, and concurrency support. On the other hand, GraalVM is a high-performance, polyglot virtual machine that supports multiple languages and provides advanced features for optimizing and running applications. Let's explore the key differences between Go and GraalVM:

Language and Compilation: Go is a programming language designed for simplicity and speed, offering a concise syntax and a straightforward compilation process. It is statically-typed and compiled directly to machine code, resulting in fast and efficient executables. GraalVM, on the other hand, is not a programming language itself but a virtual machine that supports multiple languages, including Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and more. It uses Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation to optimize the execution of code from different languages.
Performance and Polyglot Support: Go is known for its excellent performance and runtime efficiency. Its native compilation results in faster startup times and reduced memory footprint, making it suitable for high-performance applications. While Go is a single-language platform, GraalVM's key differentiator is its ability to execute code from multiple languages in the same runtime environment. This polyglot support enables developers to mix and match languages within their applications, allowing them to leverage the strengths of different languages for specific tasks.
Garbage Collection: Go comes with a built-in garbage collector that efficiently manages memory allocation and deallocation, reducing the burden on developers for memory management. In contrast, GraalVM supports different garbage collectors, including the GraalVM Garbage Collector (GraalVM GC) and other collectors from supported languages. The choice of garbage collector in GraalVM can be customized based on the requirements of the application and the specific language being used.
Native Image Generation: One of the standout features of GraalVM is its capability to create native images from Java applications. Native image generation compiles Java bytecode ahead-of-time (AOT) into a standalone executable, eliminating the need for a separate JVM during execution. This feature significantly reduces startup time and memory overhead, making GraalVM an attractive option for microservices and serverless architectures.
Ecosystem and Community: Go has a mature and thriving ecosystem, with a large community and a rich set of libraries and frameworks available for various tasks. While GraalVM's ecosystem is growing, it may not be as extensive as Go's ecosystem due to its polyglot nature. However, GraalVM's ability to run applications from different languages in a single runtime environment can be beneficial for projects with diverse language requirements.

In summary, Go excels in performance, simplicity, and concurrency support, while GraalVM stands out with its polyglot capabilities, native image generation, and the ability to run applications from multiple languages in a single environment.

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Advice on Golang, GraalVM

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Ítalo

VP Platform Engineering at Lykon

Feb 19, 2020

Decided

We decided to use python to write our ETLs and import them into metabase via a lambda. Before python we tried using Go, but overall go was way more verbose than Python when writing the ETLs. Go also had some issues managing memory when using the S3 upload manager library. This was a deal breaker for us that made us switch to Python.

In the end the solution was much cleaner and maintainable.

261k views261k

Comments

Mohamed

Software Engineer at YottaHQ Inc.

Dec 2, 2019

Decided

PHP is easy to learn and you can get up and running in no time, available on almost all hosting providers and you can find developers easily. It has some great frameworks for building your backend like Symfony and Laravel. However, it can be challenging when running an enterprise and needs some adjustments, very recommended for starting a new project or startup.

208k views208k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Golang	GraalVM
Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.	An ecosystem and shared runtime offering performance advantages not only to JVM-based languages such as Java, Scala, Groovy, and Kotlin, but also to programming languages as JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and R. Additionally, it enables the execution of native code on the JVM via LLVM front-end.
-	Polyglot - Zero overhead interoperability between programming languages allows you to write polyglot applications and select the best language for your task; Native - Native images compiled with GraalVM ahead-of-time improve the startup time and reduce the memory footprint of JVM-based applications; Embeddable - GraalVM can be embedded in both managed and native applications. There are existing integrations into OpenJDK, Node.js, Oracle Database, and MySQL
Statistics
GitHub Stars 130.7K	GitHub Stars 21.3K
GitHub Forks 18.4K	GitHub Forks 1.8K
Stacks 24.0K	Stacks 70
Followers 13.9K	Followers 76
Votes 3.3K	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 557 High-performance 398 Simple, minimal syntax 365 Fun to write 305 Easy concurrency support via goroutines 273 Fast compilation times Cons 43 You waste time in plumbing code catching errors 25 Verbose 23 Packages and their path dependencies are braindead 16 Google's documentations aren't beginer friendly 15 Dependency management when working on multiple projects	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Revel Martini	Node.js Oracle MySQL

What are some alternatives to Golang, GraalVM?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Related Comparisons

Language and Compilation: Go is a programming language designed for simplicity and speed, offering a concise syntax and a straightforward compilation process. It is statically-typed and compiled directly to machine code, resulting in fast and efficient executables. GraalVM, on the other hand, is not a programming language itself but a virtual machine that supports multiple languages, including Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and more. It uses Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation to optimize the execution of code from different languages.
Performance and Polyglot Support: Go is known for its excellent performance and runtime efficiency. Its native compilation results in faster startup times and reduced memory footprint, making it suitable for high-performance applications. While Go is a single-language platform, GraalVM's key differentiator is its ability to execute code from multiple languages in the same runtime environment. This polyglot support enables developers to mix and match languages within their applications, allowing them to leverage the strengths of different languages for specific tasks.
Garbage Collection: Go comes with a built-in garbage collector that efficiently manages memory allocation and deallocation, reducing the burden on developers for memory management. In contrast, GraalVM supports different garbage collectors, including the GraalVM Garbage Collector (GraalVM GC) and other collectors from supported languages. The choice of garbage collector in GraalVM can be customized based on the requirements of the application and the specific language being used.
Native Image Generation: One of the standout features of GraalVM is its capability to create native images from Java applications. Native image generation compiles Java bytecode ahead-of-time (AOT) into a standalone executable, eliminating the need for a separate JVM during execution. This feature significantly reduces startup time and memory overhead, making GraalVM an attractive option for microservices and serverless architectures.
Ecosystem and Community: Go has a mature and thriving ecosystem, with a large community and a rich set of libraries and frameworks available for various tasks. While GraalVM's ecosystem is growing, it may not be as extensive as Go's ecosystem due to its polyglot nature. However, GraalVM's ability to run applications from different languages in a single runtime environment can be beneficial for projects with diverse language requirements.

Go vs GraalVM