> Unless you think Rob Pike is saying that Google is hiring mediocre programmers (hint: he's not), that statement is intended as a criticism of academics ("rese

> Unless you think Rob Pike is saying that Google is hiring mediocre programmers (hint: he's not), that statement is intended as a criticism of academics ("researchers"). He's saying that the same things that excite researchers about programming languages don't lend themselves to good software engineering in industry. (And he's right). If that was the case, it was a very dubious thought. Before Go was launched, the languages used in Google were Java, Python and C++. None of them look academic, none of them seem to require another language that is specifically designed to "unexcite" newcomers. Neither is functional, really.