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Is that really true though? What abiut python and javascript for example? Did they have a giant corp behind them?
by objektif 7y ago
Is that really true though? What abiut python and javascript for example? Did they have a giant corp behind them?
- zemo 7y ago... Python was led by a Google employee for seven years.
- rzzzt 7y agoOne of the first languages supported on App Engine was Python, IIRC.
- objektif 7y agoDoes it matter where the person worked? Python definitely was not Google’s or any other corp’s.
- zemo 7y agoGoogle employed the primary maintainer of Python and paid him to work on it. You asked "did they have a giant corp behind them", the subtext there being that you could complete the sentence "as Go does". I'm merely pointing out that your example of Python is strikingly similar to Guido Van Rossum working at Google while he was BDFL of Python
- joemi 7y agoOf course it matters. That's the whole reason the Go Is Google's Language post exists. And the whole reason the response exists, and this very comment thread, too.
- objektif 7y agoAbsolutely not. It is one thing to create a language and maontain it and another to hire someone who created a language some years ago.
- joemi 7y agofrom the post: > There was no mandate or suggestion from Google management or executives that Google should develop a programming language. For many years, including well after the open source release, I doubt any Google executives had more than a vague awareness of the existence of Go
- objektif 7y agoThat is a ver very strong assumption. Just because Google did not explicitly have a ‘GO’ team does not mean they did not support it. I assume Google became aware of it the moment their employees started using it for something useful. People have bosses who have bosses. At whoch point they decided to let their employees continue working on it.
- emmelaich 7y agoGo exists because Rob Pike, Ken Thompson and others are allowed the latitude to make it. You can be sure that whatever they do gets a high profile without it in any way being "supported" or "official"
- dudus 7y agoIt would be more correct to say Google hired the leader of Python and he worked there for 7 years
- joemi 7y agoIs there really much practical difference between that and Go? From the Ian Lance Taylor response: > There was no mandate or suggestion from Google management or executives that Google should develop a programming language. For many years, including well after the open source release, I doubt any Google executives had more than a vague awareness of the existence of Go
- walterstucco 7y agoIt's Google's fault if python is so widespread No Google, no Python Imagine it
- dpc_pw 7y agoWasn't it Google that heavily used Python that popularized it a lot? And JS was born and evolved with the browser.
- danieldk 7y agoPython was picked up by companies like Red Hat at the end of the nineties (e.g. in the Anaconda installer). So in Linux circles Python had already gained quite a bit of popularity.
- rusk 7y agoJavascript was Netscape, and adopted by various other megacorps (such ad Microsoft and ... Google) over the years in various guises.
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- dtech 7y agoIt certainly is in the last decade or so. Python is a language from the early nineties and took decades to achieve it's current level of popularity. Javascript was backed by Netscape, and later by Microsoft/IE. It would never have succeeded without corporate backing and being on of the 2.5 usable languages on the web (Java was the other one, I'm counting ActiveX/VBScript as half)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- benesch 7y agoJavaScript is an interesting case, in that it was the only way to write code that would run in Netscape Navigator at the time. In a sense it had Netscape behind it, and then it had Microsoft behind it once they reverse-engineered an implementation for IE3. I'm not very familiar with the history of Python, though it seems it was funded in its early years by various research institutes that employed Guido van Rossum, rather than a giant corporation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]