Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language

Many of today’s programmers—excuse me, software engineers—consider themselves “creatives.” Artists of a sort. They are fixed to ostentatious idiosyncratic websites with cleverly hidden Easter eggs and parallax scrolling; they confer upon themselves multihyphenate occupation titles (“ex-Amazon-engineer-investor-author”) and assemblage their laptops with identity-signaling vinyl stickers. Some respect themselves arsenic literate sophisticates. Consider the references smashed into definite merchandise names: Apache Kafka, ScyllaDB, Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Much of that, I admit, applies to me. The quality is I’m a tad abbreviated connected talents to hyphenate, and my artifact projects—with names similar “Nabokov” (I know, I know)—are amended disconnected staying connected my laptop. I entered this satellite beauteous overmuch the infinitesimal software engineering overtook banking arsenic the astir reviled profession. There’s a batch of hatred, and self-hatred, to contend with.

Perhaps this is wherefore I spot the ethos down the programming connection Go arsenic some a rebuke and a imaginable corrective to my procreation of strivers. Its creators hail from an epoch erstwhile programmers had smaller egos and less commercialized ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose connection of the caller millennium—not the champion astatine immoderate 1 thing, but astir the champion astatine astir everything. A exemplary for our flashy times.

If I were to categorize programming languages similar creation movements, determination would beryllium mid-century utilitarianism (Fortran, COBOL), high-theory formalism (Haskell, Agda), Americorporate pragmatism (C#, Java), grassroots communitarianism (Python, Ruby), and esoteric hedonism (Befunge, Brainfuck). And I’d accidental Go, often described arsenic “C for the 21st century,” represents neoclassicism: not truthful overmuch a gyration arsenic a throwback.

Back successful 2007, 3 programmers astatine Google came unneurotic astir the shared consciousness that modular languages similar C++ and Java had go hard to usage and poorly adapted to the current, much cloud-oriented computing environment. One was Ken Thompson, formerly of Bell Labs and a recipient of the Turing Award for his enactment connected Unix, the mitochondrial Eve of operating systems. (These days, OS radical don’t messiness with programming languages—doing some is akin to an Olympic precocious jumper besides qualifying for the marathon.) Joining him was Rob Pike, different Bell Labs alum who, on with Thompson, created the Unicode encoding modular UTF-8. You tin convey them for your emoji.

Watching these doyens of programming make Go was similar seeing Scorsese, De Niro, and Pesci reunite for The Irishman. Even its flippantly SEO-unfriendly sanction could beryllium forgiven. I mean, the sheer chutzpah of it. A determination lone the reigning hunt motor king would dare.

The connection rapidly gained traction. The prestige of Google must’ve helped, but I presume determination was an unmet hunger for novelty. By 2009, the twelvemonth of Go’s debut, the youngest of mainstream languages were mostly inactive from 1995—a existent annus mirabilis, erstwhile Ruby, PHP, Java, and JavaScript each came out.

It wasn’t that advancements successful programming connection plan had stalled. Language designers are a magnificently brainy bunch, galore with a reformist zeal for dislodging the presumption quo. But what they extremity up gathering tin sometimes lucifer a starchitect’s high-design marvel that turns retired to person drainage problems. Most caller languages ne'er flooded basal show issues.

But from the get-go, Go was (sorry) acceptable to go. I erstwhile wrote a tiny hunt motor successful Python for sifting done my notes and documents, but it was unusably sluggish. Rewritten successful Go, my pitiful serpent grew wings and took off, moving 30 times faster. As immoderate astute readers mightiness person guessed, this programme was my “Nabokov.”