A Kind Legacy For Go

I use Go off and on. I’ve recently had the opportunity to use it again. I feel comfortable now with a handful of languages including Go. More importantly I’ve fought fires in production, developed new services, and tried to refactor balls of mud in a handful of languages. Out of them all no language is more kind to it’s user then Go.

That fact is on display in this talk Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering. It’s author (Rob Pike one of the original creators of Go), lays out why go was created and the lineage of thought that went into its creation.

This quote in particular stands out.

Go is more about software engineering than programming language research. Or to rephrase, it is about language design in the service of software engineering.

And, they talk a little bit about what engineering is

The language was designed by and for people who write—and read and debug and maintain—large software systems.

They are thinking about the people who must use code to deliver value day in and day out. I appreciate that level of thought and care that has gone into making a language and it make’s me happy to share this language with others who I work with.