Go compiles to a single binary with no runtime to install, starts in milliseconds, and is deliberately small enough that a new developer can read the whole language in a weekend. NUZM uses it for APIs, background workers and command-line tools where predictable speed and easy deployment matter more than expressiveness.
What this includes
- A single static binary per service, so deployment is copying a file rather than matching runtime versions.
- Table-driven tests, which is how the language expects tests to be written and how they stay readable.
- Structured logging and metrics from the first commit rather than added after an incident.
- Graceful shutdown, so a deploy does not drop the requests that were mid-flight.
Is this the right choice for you?
Right for services that must be fast, small and boring: an API in front of a database, a worker draining a queue, a tool your own team runs.
Wrong where the domain is genuinely complicated. Go leaves out the abstractions other languages use to model complexity, which is a virtue in a network service and a burden in a system with elaborate business rules.
Worth knowing before you commit
Goroutines are cheap, which is exactly why they are the commonest source of trouble in Go code: it is easy to start ten thousand and never notice the ones that are still running. Every concurrent path we write has a defined way to be cancelled.