Content posted here with the permission of the author PJ Hagerty, who is Developer, writer, speaker, musician, and Developer Advocate. He is known to travel the world speaking about programming and the way people think and interact.
Ruby and Go are very popular programming languages and they stand out among the hundreds of the programming languages people are using nowadays. They are simple, easy to use, and available on most Operating Systems by default.
But are they the same? What are the differences? In this post we will give you a general
introduction to Ruby and Go, as well as the difference between the two programming
languages.
What are they?
First, let’s start with their definitions! Ruby is “a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity.” Simplicity refers to the naturalness and explicitness of its syntax. That is to say, you don’t need to think very hard about how to translate your ideas to the programming language, but use it naturally like talking to someone, so that you can focus on the problem to solve.
Go is also an open source programming language, and it is easy to use, simple, reliable, and efficient. Compared to Ruby, it is faster, more reliable, and produces higher quality applications. Another difference is that Go is ideal for solving both complex and simple multi-threaded tasks.
When were they created and who created them?
Ruby was created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto in 1995. He believes that the programming language, rather than adjust to computer needs, should emphasize more of a human user experience. Matz’s idea for creating Ruby was to help computer programmers enjoy coding, and reduce programming work and possible confusion that may occur.
Go is younger than Ruby, it was created by Robert Griesemer, Ken Thomson, and Rob Pike in 2009. They aimed to create a language to simplify the development process and to achieve results faster. In order to create a reliable, robust, and efficient software, the creators started their experiment as a Google project. They were influenced by many other programming languages, including C, Pascal, Alef, and Oberon. As a result, Go is a more compatible language that can work together with different stacks to improve general app performance.
Other Comparisons
- Ruby is described as muti-diagram programming language, which means Ruby supports more than one diagram, so that the developers can find the most suitable style and use the associated language to work on the given job.
- Go does not have a preprocessor. A preprocessor helps to process the input data, and use it as an input for another program. However, the preprocessor may alter the logic, so the final result may not be the one you expected. Without the preprocessor, Go could avoid the potential systematic errors, which saves time and energy for the developers, so that they can spend more time by focusing on their tasks.
Both Ruby and Go are famous for their simplicity and productivity, but there are some differences between them:
- Compatibility:
As for their compatibility, Go outperforms Ruby because Go interacts with nearly all databases as a server-side language, while Ruby is limited to some popular databases. Also, Go can be used to be bundled with different stacks like Python and Go, PHP and even Ruby to improve general app performance.
- Speed.
Go is faster than Ruby according to the processing speed because Go does not need to be interpreted.
- Object.
Go is not an object-oriented language that you can apply it to most problems, however Ruby is an object-oriented language that treats everything that appears in code as an object.
Summary:
As you can see, Ruby and Go have different characteristics, and you may choose the most appropriate one that can work on the tasks efficiently to meet your requirements.
Josh Software 
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