4 ms·

I was having lunch with a friend of mine who works at Google a few weeks ago and I asked him how popular Go was at Google. He said the only people using it are

I was having lunch with a friend of mine who works at Google a few weeks ago and I asked him how popular Go was at Google. He said the only people using it are the Go team. Java and C++ continue to reign supreme at Google.

enneff 14y ago
Your friend is out of the loop. I am one of the Go readability reviewers, and I review thousands of lines of Go code each week. The code is written by Googlers from different teams around the world. It is true that Go is in the minority compared to C++ and Java. Change takes time at a company of this size. But the graphs are all up and to the right, and the rate of Go code being written at Google is accelerating.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  So when do we expected it listed as an official Google language?
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    It already is.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      I fail to see it like that. It is not listed here: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ These guides are much more than just what gofmt does. In a Google IO conference talk someone stated that the Google App Engine support was actually made by the Go team. Not all new APIs released by Google tend to offer Go APIs as well from day 1. So I miss the official language support that you say already exists.
      - enneff 14y ago
        Google had four canonical languages: C++, Go, Java, and Python. They are defined internally in an engineering handbook. There is no such similar style guide for Go, as a a lot of what the existing guides say is "don't use x." If that were needed for Go we would have failed.
        stock_toaster 14y ago
        I imagine the Go style guide would also largely boil down to 'use `go fmt`'.
        pjmlp 14y ago
        Fare enough. > If that were needed for Go we would have failed. Why? Even with Go there are many ways to do certain things. I can imagine given the language's youth not everyone would write the code the best way. I know the few times I did some Go coding, I was most likely not good enough to the canonical style.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- jlouis 14y ago
  Let me add: more powerful and expressive languages can often get away with far fewer programmers. So if you measure in sheer numbers of people working on, or lines of code being executed, you get the wrong number count. A rough estimate from Erlang, is that the typical Erlang program is 1/5th of the typical C++ program implementing the same functionality. And the Erlang program even handles unforseen events :)
  - oinksoft 14y ago
    Ssshh, don't talk about Erlang/OTP too loud, they might realize how good it is ;)
    - jlouis 14y ago
      My stance is still the same as two years ago: Golang is a very decent language with a lot of interesting features. But the lack of direct address of fault-tolerance is what I am missing. In distributed systems, you can't hope to handle all kinds of failure scenarios. You have to punt at some point and assume that the problem doesn't ever happen in the real world. And that is where you need fault tolerance.
      - codewright 14y ago
        It's not really common or standard to rely on a cluster of VM instances to solve your distributed problems for you these days. For most programmers: Statelessness is the default, replication and fail-over are the back-up plan. Talking about Erlang's "fault tolerance" as if it's some sort of secret weapon these days (it was more important 10-20 years ago) is a canard and distracts from the better parts of Erlang.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    > A rough estimate from Erlang, is that the typical Erlang program is 1/5th of the typical C++ program implementing the same functionality. And taking that to the extreme, J/K/APL is usually 1/100th of the typical C++/Java program implementing the same functionality. Unlike erlang, it's not more robust - but it's often faster (not because of some theoretical advantage - when you write 1/100th of the code with the right primitive, you have more time to think about optimizing it) But as another poster said: Shh, don't tell anyone about our unfair advantage.
- sigzero 14y ago
  You pretty much agreed with his friend.
  - enneff 14y ago
    No I did not. The friend said that nobody outside the Go team uses Go. My post indicates that the majority of Go code at Google is written by people working on other teams.
- eta_carinae 14y ago
  > I am one of the Go readability reviewers, and I review thousands of lines of Go code each week. If you're on the Go readability team, you are going to see thousands of lines of Go code each week, as a simple consequence of selection bias. Your observation doesn't invalidate my friend's claim. Something that would invalidate that claim would be how many lines of Go are submitted into the Google code base every week compared to Java and C++. My friend is simply saying that this ratio is minuscule.
  - kenko 14y ago
    His claim is still an effective denial of the claim he was denying, namely, that the only people using Go are on the Go team.
  - quest88 14y ago
    Of course it is. There are a ton of existing projects in those languages.
Symmetry 14y ago
Well, one of my friends who works at Google is using Go for whatever project she's working on.

enneff 14y ago

Your friend is out of the loop. I am one of the Go readability reviewers, and I review thousands of lines of Go code each week. The code is written by Googlers from different teams around the world. It is true that Go is in the minority compared to C++ and Java. Change takes time at a company of this size. But the graphs are all up and to the right, and the rate of Go code being written at Google is accelerating.

pjmlp 14y ago
So when do we expected it listed as an official Google language?
- Symmetry 14y ago
  It already is.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    I fail to see it like that. It is not listed here: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ These guides are much more than just what gofmt does. In a Google IO conference talk someone stated that the Google App Engine support was actually made by the Go team. Not all new APIs released by Google tend to offer Go APIs as well from day 1. So I miss the official language support that you say already exists.
    - enneff 14y ago
      Google had four canonical languages: C++, Go, Java, and Python. They are defined internally in an engineering handbook. There is no such similar style guide for Go, as a a lot of what the existing guides say is "don't use x." If that were needed for Go we would have failed.
      - stock_toaster 14y ago
        I imagine the Go style guide would also largely boil down to 'use `go fmt`'.
      - pjmlp 14y ago
        Fare enough. > If that were needed for Go we would have failed. Why? Even with Go there are many ways to do certain things. I can imagine given the language's youth not everyone would write the code the best way. I know the few times I did some Go coding, I was most likely not good enough to the canonical style.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
jlouis 14y ago
Let me add: more powerful and expressive languages can often get away with far fewer programmers. So if you measure in sheer numbers of people working on, or lines of code being executed, you get the wrong number count. A rough estimate from Erlang, is that the typical Erlang program is 1/5th of the typical C++ program implementing the same functionality. And the Erlang program even handles unforseen events :)
- oinksoft 14y ago
  Ssshh, don't talk about Erlang/OTP too loud, they might realize how good it is ;)
  - jlouis 14y ago
    My stance is still the same as two years ago: Golang is a very decent language with a lot of interesting features. But the lack of direct address of fault-tolerance is what I am missing. In distributed systems, you can't hope to handle all kinds of failure scenarios. You have to punt at some point and assume that the problem doesn't ever happen in the real world. And that is where you need fault tolerance.
    - codewright 14y ago
      It's not really common or standard to rely on a cluster of VM instances to solve your distributed problems for you these days. For most programmers: Statelessness is the default, replication and fail-over are the back-up plan. Talking about Erlang's "fault tolerance" as if it's some sort of secret weapon these days (it was more important 10-20 years ago) is a canard and distracts from the better parts of Erlang.
- beagle3 14y ago
  > A rough estimate from Erlang, is that the typical Erlang program is 1/5th of the typical C++ program implementing the same functionality. And taking that to the extreme, J/K/APL is usually 1/100th of the typical C++/Java program implementing the same functionality. Unlike erlang, it's not more robust - but it's often faster (not because of some theoretical advantage - when you write 1/100th of the code with the right primitive, you have more time to think about optimizing it) But as another poster said: Shh, don't tell anyone about our unfair advantage.
sigzero 14y ago
You pretty much agreed with his friend.
- enneff 14y ago
  No I did not. The friend said that nobody outside the Go team uses Go. My post indicates that the majority of Go code at Google is written by people working on other teams.
eta_carinae 14y ago
> I am one of the Go readability reviewers, and I review thousands of lines of Go code each week. If you're on the Go readability team, you are going to see thousands of lines of Go code each week, as a simple consequence of selection bias. Your observation doesn't invalidate my friend's claim. Something that would invalidate that claim would be how many lines of Go are submitted into the Google code base every week compared to Java and C++. My friend is simply saying that this ratio is minuscule.
- kenko 14y ago
  His claim is still an effective denial of the claim he was denying, namely, that the only people using Go are on the Go team.
- quest88 14y ago
  Of course it is. There are a ton of existing projects in those languages.

Symmetry 14y ago

Well, one of my friends who works at Google is using Go for whatever project she's working on.