The world of programming has become increasingly flashy, with many programmers regarding themselves as “creatives” or artists. However, the ethos behind the programming language Go is a rebuke to this trend. Created by Ken Thompson and Rob Pike, two of the most renowned programmers in the industry, Go is a general-purpose language that is nearly the best at nearly everything.
Go represents a neoclassical approach to programming, a throwback to simpler times when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial ambitions. It was created in 2007 by three programmers at Google who were dissatisfied with standard languages like C++ and Java. They wanted to create a language that was easy to use and well-adapted to the cloud-oriented computing environment.
The creators of Go are no strangers to innovation. Ken Thompson, a recipient of the Turing Award, and Rob Pike, who helped create the Unicode encoding standard UTF-8, brought their expertise to the table. The result was a language that was both simple and powerful.
Go quickly gained traction after its debut in 2009. The prestige of Google likely helped, but there was also an unmet hunger for novelty. Go was a breath of fresh air in a world of stagnant programming languages.
What Sets Go Apart
Unlike many new programming languages, Go was ready to go from the start. It didn’t suffer from the performance issues that plague many new languages. In fact, Go is so efficient that it can run programs 30 times faster than other languages.
Go is a model for the future of programming. It shows that simplicity and elegance can be just as powerful as complexity and innovation. As the world of programming continues to evolve, Go is a reminder that sometimes the best way forward is to look back to the past.