You might have misunderstood the parent, I think. It seems like he was saying that they used Java (and then Go) in lieu of Python because of the performance.

But to answer your question, the Language Shootout seems to suggest Java and Go are on the same plane in terms of speed. Take that with however many grains of salt you like.

It's also interesting that according to the Language Shootout Go uses a fraction the memory of Java - meaning you can save a lot of money by deploying it on cheaper machines or VMs and get similar performance to Java.

I just checked out the language shootout. Go has really pulled ahead from where it used to be. Faster than SBCL or Ocaml or Free pascal on quad core 64-bit - that's impressive.

Clojure's done some impressive improving, too.

And be aware that Go is quite young compared to Java, the optimisations will be better and better

I wouldn't use Go for high-frequency trading systems yet. But you get 80% of the performance with a lot fewer type declarations.

I can use Scala and not pay that penalty. I'm looking at Go to replace components of my system where I don't want a full bore JVM, but I have to be thoughtful about latency. I prefer C for this (C++ seems to be the standard there). Would love to move to something like Go once I can.

Well some persons are ready to trust Go even for this http://andrewwdeane.blogspot.de/2013/05/the-reliability-of-g...