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I've been thinking a lot lately about why Go, a quite minimalist language by modern standards, has been so incredibly successful in such a short time. It's abou

I've been thinking a lot lately about why Go, a quite minimalist language by modern standards, has been so incredibly successful in such a short time. It's about a decade old, and is already among the top 5 languages for people starting new OSS projects (at least in my area, which is systems management). Green field development is being done in Go at a rate unprecedented for such a new language, I think. Node/JS might be precedent if we say that Node is a whole new thing, even though it uses JS as its syntax, using it as a server language is pretty new (ignoring Netscape's failed attempts at it in the 90s). I'm tempted to compare it to PHP, which exploded in popularity despite (unarguably, IMHO) better languages existing all around it at the time. Go doesn't seem like a bad language in the way that PHP was a bad language for its first 4~5 major versions, but it does find itself surrounded by many more powerful/expressive languages, and is seemingly getting much faster adoption. I've been learning Go myself, and while I miss some of the features of my normal primary languages (Perl, lately, but also Ruby and Python), I like that I can read other people's Go code without having to look anything up, even though Go is very new to me and I have years experience reading/writing Perl/Ruby/Python. Of course, Perl/Python/Ruby aren't a major paradigm shift away from Go as Haskell is...but, it's still a question of whether it's better to write ten simplistic LOC or two maybe opaque LOC. I tend to prefer concision over verbosity (and thus hate reading Java; I get lost in the trees before I can find the forest). Maybe Go is a sweet spot for a lot of developers. Rob Pike did a talk called Simplicity is Complicated, about this very subject...I found it a pretty convincing argument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFejpH_tAHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFejpH_tAHM

notjack 10y ago
Go has one of the largest tech companies on earth actively pushing it and pouring countless programmer hours into developing tooling and support for it. That pretty much trumps all of its misfeatures in terms of gaining adoption.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  So, it's previous analogs are Java and C#? That doesn't feel quite right, either, in that Google makes no money from Go; Java and C# are both direct moneymakers for their respective stewards. I haven't really seen Google pushing Go that hard; it feels like a skunkworks project that just happened to catch everybody's eye (including the company it came out of), rather than a grand plan to conquer the world of programming.
  - notjack 10y ago
    I wouldn't call it a grand plan, but it is one of Google's five officially supported server languages and as a result there's a lot of work being done to build tools and libraries for it. Code generation and relying on language-agnostic building and packaging systems (bazel) are both pretty common Google-isms, which show how the company's development culture influenced the priorities and direction of the language.
    - brianyu8 10y ago
      What are the other 4? Python, C++, Java, and what other language?
      - psiclops 10y ago
        Javascript
        notjack 10y ago
        Not a server language (no NodeJS at google). The other is C.
        psiclops 10y ago
        AFAIK (although I could be wrong about this) the typical 'five' languages used at Google are not specifically for servers. I have heard they are Javascript, Java, Python, Go, and C++
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - im_down_w_otp 10y ago
    It seems like everyone wants to believe they have Google-shaped problems, and thus should mimic Google in as many ways as they possibly can. Is some component of it that? Whether or not it's part of some grand plan? This happens in hiring practices, in programming languages, in infrastructure tech, in data tech, etc. It's extremely rare to encounter a data scale problem that actually requires a Hadoop-ish deployment, but they're all over the place. It's extremely rare to encounter an ops infrastructure that requires a scale and complexity where Kubernetes-ish tools make sense, but they're all over the place. I admittedly don't fully understand the point of Go (as in existentially). I have used it, and will assuredly have to keep using it based on its increasing popularity. But it's not as good as Erlang for reliability or supporting production tools (services use cases). It's not as good as Rust or Haskell for implementation assurance (safety/security use cases). It's not as good for numerical processing as Julia or Fortran (scientific/performance use cases). It feels a lot like the next generation of Java to me. In that it's some shape of "good enough". And when "good enough" is combined with the cachet of aligning oneself with Google's ecosystem, it's basically unstoppable.
spraak 10y ago
My journey and perspective is so similar, thank you for sharing your experience
sheepmullet 10y ago
> has been so incredibly successful in such a short time. 1) Our industry is obsessed with new and shiny. 2) There are a lot of developers and companies who don't have the time to invest in a new paradigm or language. 3) By learning/using golang these developers and companies can look "hip" and forward thinking with minimal effort. With a Java background and a 10 hour investment in golang you can write decent software. With a 10 hour investment in Haskell you can't do anything.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  The problem is, people tell me that if I just learn Haskell, Idris, Closure, Coffescript, Rust, C++17, C#, F#, Swift, D, Lua, Scala, Ruby, Python, Lisp, Scheme, Julia, Emacs Lisp, Vimscript, Smalltalk, Tcl, Verilog, Perl, Go... then I'll finally find 'programming nirvana'. While you might think it's worth spending 100+ hours learning Haskell, I don't (at the moment) have any reason to Haskell as a better time investment than anything else on that list.. why should I give it more than 10 hours?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sheepmullet 10y ago
    I completely agree.
  - doall 10y ago
    Just a typo, but you mean Clojure？ :)
  - angry_octet 10y ago
    I don't know about you, but everything I work on is going to be something that someone will have to maintain, or will be actively developed by multiple people with different categories of expertise. Also, I usually want to build on other people's work (i.e. libraries). So while I'd love to write big chunks of Haskell, if its just me doing it, that code will be nuked and rewritten unless I also undertake a project of education. So accessibility is key. Go/python/js seem to win in that regard, and likewise in access to libraries. So unless as an organisation there is motivation to step up skilling, e.g. because there is a lot of money at stake if something breaks (e.g. trading software), or because there is a community of practice (compilers) its hard to see Haskell gaining much ground. Likewise all those other languages has their niche, and it is hard to seem them displacing each other.

notjack 10y ago

Go has one of the largest tech companies on earth actively pushing it and pouring countless programmer hours into developing tooling and support for it. That pretty much trumps all of its misfeatures in terms of gaining adoption.

SwellJoe 10y ago
So, it's previous analogs are Java and C#? That doesn't feel quite right, either, in that Google makes no money from Go; Java and C# are both direct moneymakers for their respective stewards. I haven't really seen Google pushing Go that hard; it feels like a skunkworks project that just happened to catch everybody's eye (including the company it came out of), rather than a grand plan to conquer the world of programming.
- notjack 10y ago
  I wouldn't call it a grand plan, but it is one of Google's five officially supported server languages and as a result there's a lot of work being done to build tools and libraries for it. Code generation and relying on language-agnostic building and packaging systems (bazel) are both pretty common Google-isms, which show how the company's development culture influenced the priorities and direction of the language.
  - brianyu8 10y ago
    What are the other 4? Python, C++, Java, and what other language?
    - psiclops 10y ago
      Javascript
      - notjack 10y ago
        Not a server language (no NodeJS at google). The other is C.
        psiclops 10y ago
        AFAIK (although I could be wrong about this) the typical 'five' languages used at Google are not specifically for servers. I have heard they are Javascript, Java, Python, Go, and C++
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- im_down_w_otp 10y ago
  It seems like everyone wants to believe they have Google-shaped problems, and thus should mimic Google in as many ways as they possibly can. Is some component of it that? Whether or not it's part of some grand plan? This happens in hiring practices, in programming languages, in infrastructure tech, in data tech, etc. It's extremely rare to encounter a data scale problem that actually requires a Hadoop-ish deployment, but they're all over the place. It's extremely rare to encounter an ops infrastructure that requires a scale and complexity where Kubernetes-ish tools make sense, but they're all over the place. I admittedly don't fully understand the point of Go (as in existentially). I have used it, and will assuredly have to keep using it based on its increasing popularity. But it's not as good as Erlang for reliability or supporting production tools (services use cases). It's not as good as Rust or Haskell for implementation assurance (safety/security use cases). It's not as good for numerical processing as Julia or Fortran (scientific/performance use cases). It feels a lot like the next generation of Java to me. In that it's some shape of "good enough". And when "good enough" is combined with the cachet of aligning oneself with Google's ecosystem, it's basically unstoppable.

spraak 10y ago

My journey and perspective is so similar, thank you for sharing your experience

sheepmullet 10y ago

> has been so incredibly successful in such a short time. 1) Our industry is obsessed with new and shiny. 2) There are a lot of developers and companies who don't have the time to invest in a new paradigm or language. 3) By learning/using golang these developers and companies can look "hip" and forward thinking with minimal effort. With a Java background and a 10 hour investment in golang you can write decent software. With a 10 hour investment in Haskell you can't do anything.

CJefferson 10y ago
The problem is, people tell me that if I just learn Haskell, Idris, Closure, Coffescript, Rust, C++17, C#, F#, Swift, D, Lua, Scala, Ruby, Python, Lisp, Scheme, Julia, Emacs Lisp, Vimscript, Smalltalk, Tcl, Verilog, Perl, Go... then I'll finally find 'programming nirvana'. While you might think it's worth spending 100+ hours learning Haskell, I don't (at the moment) have any reason to Haskell as a better time investment than anything else on that list.. why should I give it more than 10 hours?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sheepmullet 10y ago
  I completely agree.
- doall 10y ago
  Just a typo, but you mean Clojure？ :)
- angry_octet 10y ago
  I don't know about you, but everything I work on is going to be something that someone will have to maintain, or will be actively developed by multiple people with different categories of expertise. Also, I usually want to build on other people's work (i.e. libraries). So while I'd love to write big chunks of Haskell, if its just me doing it, that code will be nuked and rewritten unless I also undertake a project of education. So accessibility is key. Go/python/js seem to win in that regard, and likewise in access to libraries. So unless as an organisation there is motivation to step up skilling, e.g. because there is a lot of money at stake if something breaks (e.g. trading software), or because there is a community of practice (compilers) its hard to see Haskell gaining much ground. Likewise all those other languages has their niche, and it is hard to seem them displacing each other.