Go vs Python: What Every Developer Should Know

Python is powerful but has its quirks—like imports and dependency issues. What if there was a faster, simpler alternative? Meet Go—a modern language nearly as powerful as Rust. In this video, I compare these languages and share a surprising discovery!

🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:36 Hello World
2:30 What is Go?
3:07 Typing and Compilation
4:16 Error Handling in Go vs Python
9:38 Functions in Python vs Go
10:58 Classes and Data Structures
14:02 Abstraction
16:56 Concurrency
18:40 REST API example
21:35 Performance
25:47 Final Thoughts

#arjancodes #softwaredesign #python

[ricardofreixo]

This is what Youtube needs. a good Go communicator. There are a few Go developers making content. But good developer and good communicator is a combo hard to come by. More please!

[Ziggity]

Excellent video. I'd only add that Python protocols are the most comparable to Go interfaces, since the implementation of both is implicit

I use all 3 at my company. We only had Python at the beginning, then we started running into serious performance bottlenecks on the hardware and I led a migration to Golang. Honestly I think it just hits the sweet spot when it comes to performance and ease of use, and it was super easy to start being productive with it. Since we launched a low cost device with even more limited resources, we employed Rust. Much smaller binaries and less memory usage.

Overall I'd say default to Golang, switch to Python for quick prototyping or a specific library (AI or scientific stuff), or switch to Rust if you're really resource constrained.

[mariohdz-xt]

I just started learning go like 2 days ago. What better way of learning than with one of my favourite Python youtubers. please more videos about python Arjan!

[kapaspeter]

You are an excellent teacher! Please create more in-depth Go (Golang) videos on the following topics:

Pointers & Memory Management
Concurrency (Goroutines & Channels)
Error Handling & Debugging
Interfaces & Composition
Networking & APIs
Database & Storage
Code Organization & Best Practices

[ross-spencer]

Python day to day but golang is my fave. I like that it cross compiles and always prefer the confidence compilation brings. Only quibble with go is patterns for error handling. Errors in golang are verbose, asking forgiveness in Python is simply lovely.

[igorb]

I would love to see more Go-related content! "What bothers you in go?" - Definitely that would be datetime formatting :D

[jdmcivicrrr]

As someone who mostly uses python for everyday tasks for its simplicity (and now with Ollama API calls with structured responses with pydantic ) I've always wanted to learn Go, however I don't know if there are many libraries in Go for this. I really enjoyed this video comparing the two and it would be nice to see more, how to learn Go if you're coming from python. Thanks for the video ❤

Edit: just for clarity, I find Go videos here are primarily focused on Web Servers whereas you will find Python videos on almost everything you can imagine.

[rnrbarbosa]

I am also using the 3 languages Python, Rust e Go. For Python it makes sense to pair it with Rust due to its tight integration. With rust you can extend Python. But I must agree that with Go all is simple, pure joy and ideal to just enter the Flow zone without caring about the language. Plus it has a lot of support on the spaces of Cloud Apis and Kubernetes development where Rust stays short. Go is like painting and forgetting about the brush on your hand.

[jace]

My man, you must have read my mind! I was just looking into Go a few days ago and was planning to learn it as my second language (I consider Python my first).

Can’t wait until I have time to dig into this video!

[kaineyb]

Majorly also a Pythonista as yourself, however I am starting to learn Go at work - so cool to see this!. And yes! Would love to see you talk about TS/JS!

[metzgerboy]

Thank you for the video! Been following you quite a while and learned a lot from your Python videos. Since I been learning Go myself I really appreciate this one 👍🏻

[farazahmed]

I really appreciate this and typescript comparison series. It is very very helpful.

[omarcrosby]

Nice! More Go content please Arjan. :)
I'm sharing this video with all my friends now.

[raybanerjee]

Would love to see more Go videos from you on more complex topics. Thank you!

[klmcwhirter]

Go is a wonderful compliment to python. I have used them together in multiple projects. Since Go descends from C (through the APL arm of the lineage) it easily integrates with existing C libraries via the cgo tool.

I tend to use zig for situations that need interaction with C libraries. But since zig is not supported for prod use yet, though, I use Go for those use cases.

Rust is still too young for my taste. I may take another look in 10 years or so.

Thanks for the awesome video.

[mrrobotman]

Did you run the Rust prime finder in release mode? That greatly speeds everything up from debug mode (default)

[yjawhar]

In go you can't ignore the error if it's assigned to a variable. It needs to be explicitly assigned to "_" (underscore) if you want to ignore it because, in Go, you can't compile (or run) a program that has an unused assigned variable.

[johnosborn]

Great video. A vote here for a typescript / JavaScript version next 😀

[PathikritGhosh]

Would love for you to go more in-depth with Go. If you could make a series out of it, it would be great!

[YesThatLebs]

I started playing with Go late last year after using Python in a previous job. Go is great, I love it.. I tend to miss enums.