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"But Go isn't targeting C++ or Rust.. Go is trying to replace Ruby"... If you listen to Ken Thompson and Rob Pike talk about the first days of Go, it was direc

• pdeuchler 8y ago
  This is correct, but they quickly pivoted to targeting the Python codebases. Rob Pike has a talk where he talks about how Google used C++ and C to rewrite hot Python paths and how they wanted Go to be able to completely replace that whole pattern. Russ also has a blog post (maybe? it also could have been a comment in a github issue, tbh I can't remember) where he mentions converting python programmers was orders of magnitude easier within Google, as the C++ programmers often had rose colored glasses about their own abilities and the tradeoffs of C++. It's interesting, as I don't think Go would have been successful without the pivot, but I also don't think it would have been as successful if they had started off trying to replace Python.
  • lostmsu 8y ago
    Well, why did not they just use C#? It already had most, maybe even all of Go's current features. Hell, the main thing of Go, the go op is basically await.
    • JeremyBanks 8y ago
      C# would be a good option today, but at the time it was an expensive proprietary closed-source blob maintained by one of their primary competitors, and async/await was still years away. I don't like Go very much, but it was a reasonable choice for Google.
      • lostmsu 8y ago
        In 2008 Mono was already in quite a good shape.