In the opening entry of Security IQ, we discussed how with public key cryptography we get privacy and authenticity when we send messages, but what we don’t get is
I’m going to tell you something that you already know: security is important. No matter how much we might rather be looking at shiny new JavaScript frameworks, data integrity is one of those few issues that can destroy the reputation of our products and companies overnight. What UI framework BigBank’s web app uses will never make the front page news, but a visible security breach definitely will. There’s a lot at stake in getting it right.
Considering its importance, it’s clear
If you are a regular reader you will know just how much I have fallen for Golang recently. If not, see Fun with WebSockets in Golang for why I think it’s such a great language for writing backend services.
As explained in that blog post, my motivation for learning Golang originated with my experimentation with Docker. Golang programs are (usually) statically compiled to machine code, not bytecode, so no runtime interpreter like a JVM or Python is required to run them. This means that you can fit those programs into the smallest Docker containers possible for maximum density and reduced attack surface. Pair that with Golang’s performance (which is comparable to C++) and you have a match made in heaven.
Today’s post isn’t exactly automation-related, but I’ve been having a lot of fun learning Golang over the last week or two and felt the need to share some of the things that I really like about the language and what I think it’s strengths are.
