Why use Go for API development?

First, there are very good reasons to use Go for API development, and they’re the same for other languages. I’m heavily biased because I love the Go programming language for multiple reasons. Still, I’m going to explain why I think Go is a great language for API development and why I think it’s ahead of other languages.

One of the main reasons is the language itself. If you know Go, you already know how simple, elegant, and fast it can be. Having a language that keeps your problem straightforward is ideal for REST API development. Go tends to provide low-complexity solutions and avoid boilerplate code. APIs are often created as small functions that give access to your logic. A language that gets straight to the point and allows you to write that code succinctly and directly is a blessing in this context.

Another good reason why you should use Go for REST is its extensive standard library, which provides you with most of the building blocks you’ll need to build an API without any external dependencies. JSON encoding/decoding, HTTP servers, URL routing, query parameters parsing, and header handling are all built into the standard library. When you start writing your API in Go, you already have all that you need to build the API. You may need some other libraries, depending on the project, but even if that’s required, the Go ecosystem surrounding APIs is, in general, very mature.

Apart from the standard library, the language itself provides particular advantages when you’re working with programs that operate concurrently, such as an API where you have multiple clients consuming that API at the same time. In those scenarios, its built-in concurrency primitives and lightweight processes (goroutines) make your applications ultra-performant out of the box, almost without you needing to think about it. The built-in HTTP server handles the requests in independent goroutines, so your API will be running concurrently, even if you don’t use goroutines anywhere in your code.

There are other popular language options out there for API development, from Python to Rust to others such as C# and Java. But, from my experience, Go falls in the sweet spot between performance, a high degree of control, development speed, and robustness. Of course, I’m biased because Go is my language of choice, but I’ve worked with other languages, and I haven’t found something in the same sweet spot that Go has for building APIs.

In conclusion, you can build APIs with any language, but not all of them provide the same value as Go. While we explore this in this book, I will show you how good Go is at writing APIs and how far you can go using the standard library almost exclusively.