November 10, 2009

Go programming language open-sourced

Google open-sourced GoA language from Google — simple syntax, fast compilation, and built-in concurrency via goroutines. on November 10, 2009 — a systems language from Pike, Thompson, and Griesemer with built-in concurrency.

What it was for

Go (programming language)GoA language from Google — simple syntax, fast compilation, and built-in concurrency via goroutines. targets cloud infrastructure: DockerSoftware that packages applications into containers — became the default way to ship and deploy services., KubernetesAn orchestration system for containers — schedules, scales, and manages fleets of services in production., Terraform, and countless microservicesAn architecture splitting applications into small independent services — each deployed and scaled separately. compile to single static binaries with goroutines for concurrency. It trades genericsType parameters in languages — write one class or function that works with many types safely.-era complexity (added later in GoA language from Google — simple syntax, fast compilation, and built-in concurrency via goroutines. 1.18) for fast compiles, a small language spec, and batteries-included networking in the standard library.

People

  • Robert Griesemerco creator
  • Rob Pikeco creator
  • Ken Thompsonco creator

Companies

  • Google

Why it's here

GoA language from Google — simple syntax, fast compilation, and built-in concurrency via goroutines. became the default language for cloud-native tooling and replaced C++ in many Google-scale services.

Why it mattered

Goroutines and channels made concurrent servers approachable; fast builds changed how teams ship backend code.

What it solved

C++ build times and complexity slowed Google infrastructure teams; they needed C-like speed with simpler concurrency.

Media

  • Go (programming language)
    ImageGo (programming language)

    The Go Authors, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons