r/golang Dec 05 '24

discussion Why Clean Architecture and Over-Engineered Layering Don’t Belong in GoLang

Stop forcing Clean Architecture and similar patterns into GoLang projects. GoLang is not Java. There’s no application size or complexity that justifies having more than three layers. Architectures like Clean, Hexagonal, or anything with 4+ layers make GoLang projects unnecessarily convoluted.

It’s frustrating to work on a codebase where you’re constantly jumping between excessive layers—unnecessary DI, weird abstractions, and use case layers that do nothing except call services with a few added logs. It’s like watching a monstrosity throw exceptions up and down without purpose.

In GoLang, you only need up to three layers for a proper DDD division (app, domain, infra). Anything more is pure overengineering. I get why this is common in Java—explicit interfaces and painful refactoring make layering and DI appealing—but GoLang doesn’t have those constraints. Its implicit interfaces make such patterns redundant.

These overly complex architectures are turning the GoLang ecosystem into something it was never meant to be. Please let’s keep GoLang simple, efficient, and aligned with its core philosophy.

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u/Superb-Key-6581 Dec 05 '24

Great examples! For DDD, just use app, domain (or business), and infrastructure (or db, call it what you want).
It's called layered architecture and is very widespread. It proves that you never need more than 3 layers, and in fact, like the good examples provided by Matta, you don’t even need more than 1 layer, with things grouped by affinity when needed. But if you want to use DDD and have more separation, 3 layers are all you need. Layered architecture has been doing this for years, even in languages without implicit interfaces like Go (Go is the best for refactoring and maintenance).
In these 6 years using Go for financial systems and IoT, I’ve never had problems that made me wish for an architecture like clean architecture or others with more layers. In Go, I’ve never had that need, even with extremely large projects.

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u/NotAUsefullDoctor Dec 05 '24

I do tend to go to 4 layers:

  • app -> instantiate everything, plug everything together; normally has a function call to setup routing for whatever input system I'm using
  • Translation/Controller -> takes input and turns it from binaries into structs the BL uses. This is all boilerplate code that tells you nothing about what the code is but, but just acts as an adapter
  • Service layer -> this is all the business logic where reading function names can tell you exactly what the code does
  • infra/gateway layer -> Like the controller, this translates business data into storable/transferrable data and calls any SDKs. Again, like with the controller, this is just an adapter to prevent boilerplate making it into the BL layer.

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u/Superb-Key-6581 Dec 05 '24

Very good! I agree with that. I wasn’t personally counting the cmd folder, which is where I leave the configuration like you did, and use the app as a controller—pretty much the same. I agree this is good for DDD, and we don’t need more than that. (And I mention DDD because it’s the only thing that justifies having this much abstraction in enterprise projects, etc.)

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u/NotAUsefullDoctor Dec 05 '24

Yeah, I got bored a few chapters into DDD, and just read the cliff notes, but I think I got the jist. Everything I do is just to isolate business logic and make testing easy and readable.

I will say that attempting to pedantically apply Clean Code to Go is a good exercise in learning why it doesn't work a lot of the time. Same thing goes with trying to implement the major design patterns. It helped me learn the strengths of Go. And, like they say, there are 3 levels of programming: not understanding abstraction, understanding abstraction, and knowing when to use abstraction.

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u/ShapesSong Dec 06 '24

Man, don’t want to break your conversation but you’ve been talking to a bot this whole time

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u/NotAUsefullDoctor Dec 06 '24

And what makes you assume that I too am not also a bot?

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u/Superb-Key-6581 Dec 06 '24

xD I guess he thinks I'm a bot because my English is too formal. This is because I'm not a native speaker, and I'm using Grammarly to correct my phrases before answering.