Why Go and Zig Are My Go-To
Tools for Web Development
Web development is probably one of the most open and versatile environments you could wish for your application. As a friend of simplicity, I have very clear favourites, especially for the back-end.
With a classic web application (which usually requires a back-end online) you have the freedom to decide whether more logic is implemented in the front-end or back-end. There are many factors when which decision makes more sense. However, it is not dictated to you.
I have a long history of PHP in the back-end. Back then I started with PHP3, without OOP, without a framework, without ORM, without bells and whistles. Later I used various frameworks such as Yii, Symfony and Laravel. But also other languages such as Ruby with Ruby on Rails as well as Python and also some Java and C#.
However, when I came across Go more than 12 years ago, the variety I used was greatly reduced. Go seemed made for me. Static binaries. Brilliant concept of concurrency. No manual memory management. Simple and slim. In particular, cross compiling with a tool chain that was almost unique up to that point.
Even though the language has changed and frameworks for web development have been added, the simplicity has remained at its core. Plus the fact that the old code can still be compiled with new Go versions.
But Go wasn’t always enough. I turned to C every now and then and was able to integrate the code very easily thanks to CGo. But now it’s Zig that has taken C’s place for me. In the end, for almost the same reasons why I like Go. Just everything a good level deeper in the system.
There are still many alternatives available to everyone. Use whatever suits your task. Use the best tool for your problem. Or what you have the most fun with. Don’t let anyone tell you that your tech stack is no good. Especially not for your own projects. Try the things. Make your own experience.