All Systems Go for the GO Programming Language

it’s a changing world and there hasn’t been any new major systems language for a decade, well not anymore as Google recently launched it’s own programming language called Go!

Rob Pike, a principal software engineer working on Go says, “The process of software development doesn’t feel any better than it did a generation ago. We deliberately tried to make a language that focused in part on rapid development, that compiles really efficiently, and that expresses dependencies efficiently and precisely so the compilation process can be controlled well. I find it much more productive to work in.”

Go, who borrowed ideas from existing languages simply describes itself as:

… simple

package main

import “fmt”

func main() {
fmt.Printf(“Hello, 世界\n”)
}

… fast
Go compilers produce fast code fast. Typical builds take a fraction of a second yet the resulting programs run nearly as quickly as comparable C or C++ code.

… safe
Go is type safe and memory safe. Go has pointers but no pointer arithmetic. For random access, use slices, which know their limits.

… concurrent
Go promotes writing systems and servers as sets of lightweight communicating processes, called goroutines, with strong support from the language. Run thousands of goroutines if you want—and say good-bye to stack overflows.

… fun
Go has fast builds, clean syntax, garbage collection, methods for any type, and run-time reflection. It feels like a dynamic language but has the speed and safety of a static language. It’s a joy to use.

… open source!

learn more about Go on the Google Tech Talks presented by Rob Pike.

or simply dive in and program on Go (http://golang.org)!

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