Go for Java Programmers • Barry Feigenbaum & Shon Saliga • GOTO 2026

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. #GOTOcon #GOTObookclub
http://gotopia.tech/bookclub

Barry Feigenbaum - Retired Sr. Principal Software Engineer & Author of "Go for Java Programmers"
Shon Saliga - IBM Storage Evangelist

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/episodes/444

RESOURCES
Barry
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryfeigenbaum

Shon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shon-saliga-32336b2

Links
https://youtu.be/ScE9TnoWltA
https://youtu.be/v9Pq69Y_yqM
https://youtu.be/miUbs3mqPJE
https://youtu.be/ZOvxa9aKCCg
https://youtu.be/RlCpgSoOX6I
https://youtu.be/2749IF7gAbI
https://youtu.be/T3vBj9jTCQY
https://youtu.be/WpvmRaHEQzA
https://youtu.be/8G8jeAUYLAQ
https://youtu.be/YAXGU2J7XjM

DESCRIPTION
Dr. Barry Feigenbaum — an IBM, Amazon and Dell veteran with a PhD in Computer Engineering and decades of Java experience — spent time working with Go on microservices and liked it enough to write the book he wished had existed when he made the switch. In this GOTO Book Club episode with longtime colleague Shon Saliga, he walks through the core contrasts: Go is a compiled language that targets a narrower domain than Java — primarily command-line tools and web servers — but excels there with smaller binaries, faster startup, and dramatically lower container overhead. Concurrency is the headline difference: Go's goroutines are far lighter than Java threads, and its channel-based communication model sidesteps many of the problems that make concurrent Java code hard to reason about.

The error handling conversation is particularly illuminating. Java's exception mechanism, while powerful, encourages developers to overuse it for ordinary error reporting — Go simply doesn't allow that by design. Errors in Go are return values, not throws; panics are reserved for truly catastrophic situations. Similarly, Go's implicit interfaces (if you implement the methods, you implement the interface — no declaration required) give the language a flexibility that feels alien to Java developers at first but becomes a strength quickly. Barry's conclusion is clear: for greenfield servers and containerized microservices, Go is worth serious consideration — and for Java developers willing to reset a few mental models, the transition is more tractable than it looks.

TIMECODES
00:00 Intro
03:01 Go vs. Java: The high-level view
04:39 Is Go a compiled or interpreted language?
06:32 Exceptions vs. panics: A design philosophy
08:47 What will Java devs miss the most?
22:10 How do Goroutines compare to Java Threads?
26:10 Implicit interfaces & pointers explained
29:40 Errors as values vs. exceptions
30:43 Is Go the next Java for servers?
31:44 Outro

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Barry Feigenbaum • Go for Java Programmers • https://amzn.to/4uRL3li
Ken Christopher, Barry Feigenbaum, Shon Salig • DOS 5: The Basic • https://amzn.to/4tKDVGs
A N M Bazlur Rahman • Modern Concurrency in Java • https://amzn.to/42w8cOk
Ben Evans & Jim Gough • Optimizing Cloud Native Java • https://amzn.to/41nivD9
Ian F. Darwin • Java Cookbook 5th ed. • https://amzn.to/3QH0NZy
Victor Grazi & Jeanne Boyarsky • Real-World Java • https://amzn.to/4oCEeBR

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