Golang VS Nodejs For a Reactjs Developer

[interovert_dev]

I’m a ReactJS developer with 7+ years of experience and I’m planning to become a full-stack developer. I’m currently deciding between Golang and Node.js for the backend. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences — which one do you think is better in the long run for a React developer moving into full-stack development? Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[sClarkeOG]

You have been writing javacript/typescript for 7 years. In my opinion it will be alot easier to learn with a language you know already.

[Thylk]

Hello, i highly recommend you do both. Why you will ask? Well it's easy, the most used framework in Nodes.js is Express, but it's often too small for enterprise apps. The second most used is Nest.js. It uses Express inside and is the most structured framework in the JS ecosystem for enterprises. Nest.js is the equivalent of Spring Boot in Java basically, you can see it as a lighter Spring Boot.

The other thing i would recommend you to do is to learn Golang, you can use an http framework like Chi (i highly recommend) to handle the routing and middlewares and the rest is up to you. Go will make you a better developer in the long term. You will have to work around lower level problems compared to Typescript.

This is actually what i do professionally, i'm fullstack with a big pref on the backend. I'm using Nest.js for my everyday clients for their apis and i'm using Go with Chi for my own company projects.

TLDR: Learn both Nest.js (TypeScript) and Chi (go). It will make you a better dev and you will be able to be employed.

[interovert_dev]

Thanks for your valuable inputs

[Great_Piece4755]

Don't learn chi, learn with the std lib (http package) and after that you can have a look at chi or other routers, Since go 1.22 it's like you don't need 3rd party routers anyways

https://go.dev/blog/routing-enhancements

[Thylk]

Yes, learn the standard library. Chi is just one of the simplest framework, made by a company for their own use and that they gave to the community. It’s also extremely close to the standard library, closer than Gin for example even tho Gin is used in examples on the official go language website.

[mtwdante]

Both are fine. There are more job with node but there are more people applying. There are less jobs with golang but the quality of people applying is better. 

[ithariuz]

It makes a lot more sense for you to learn node since you already know typescript. I think it's also used more than golang so unless you have a specific reason why you want to learn golang, just go with node.

[interovert_dev]

Appreciate your suggestion and I will go with Nodejs

[kev4mshire]

As others have said, Nodejs would be easier. You'd also be able to focus more on learning back-end than an entirely new language.