Explore how Google converted its code base to Golang

As one of the most popular programming languages ​​in the field of modern programming, Go language (Golang) has become the first choice for more and more programmers. Even tech giants like Google are gradually converting their internal code from other languages ​​to Golang. In this article, we will explore how Google converted its code base to Golang.

Golang is a new programming language released by Google in 2007. One of its founders is Ken Thompson, the co-founder of Unix. It is designed to cope with modern software development and system architecture, enables very efficient and scalable concurrency processing, and provides some important features of modern programming languages, such as memory safety, garbage collection and native code cross-compilation. wait.

Google has always been a strong supporter and advocate of Golang, which is not difficult to understand. Golang's built-in concurrent programming and efficient execution speed are exactly what Google needs, because Google's projects usually involve processing large amounts of data, network requests, and load balancing.

However, Google did not convert all code into Golang overnight, but took a gradual conversion path. Internally at Google, they have made Golang an optional language. Programmers can choose to use Golang when they need faster code execution and choose other programming languages ​​when tasks that require greater flexibility and a higher level of abstraction.

In addition, Google also realized that it is very difficult to convert all code into Golang. After all, Google uses other programming languages ​​​​in many projects, including C, Java, Python, etc. Therefore, their strategy is to refactor new code into Golang while existing code remains in the original language.

Following this strategy, Google began to trial Golang in some small projects in 2010, and then gradually used it in a wider range of projects. Currently, many Google projects are using Golang, including Google Earth Engine, Google Fiber, Google App Engine and so on.

Google Earth Engine is Google's project in the field of satellite remote sensing, using Golang for processing and calculations. In this project, Golang’s concurrency efficiency can help Google improve efficiency when processing massive remote sensing data and ensure the smooth progress of the project. Google Fiber, Google's fiber optic project, also uses Golang in many places on its server side.

Generally speaking, Google’s conversion process is not achieved overnight, but a gradual transformation process. In this process, Google still uses other programming languages ​​​​for important project development, while trying to use Golang to achieve higher execution speed and better efficiency.

Finally, we believe that converting all of Google's code into Golang is not an easy task. However, they are gradually converting their code base to Golang in their own way, and hope to optimize their projects through the unique characteristics of this language.

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