The Go Language – Google’s programming language

Google has come up with yet another product – The Go Programming Language; and as it has always been with Google products, its free and open-source!!

The Go Language is mainly based on the C programming family (C/C++/C#). The C programming family is undoubtedly the most well established and widely used around the globe.

On the other hand, Python is known to be the most highly favored and used programming language within Google. So Google came up with this new Go language which is a mixture of C, Python, Pascal/Modula/Oberon programming families to help create very dynamic and extremely fast programs.

The abstract of the Go language given by Rob Pike, a software engineer and author working at Google, states:

Go is a new experimental systems programming language intended to make software development fast. Our goal is that a major Google binary should be buildable in a few seconds on a single machine. The language is concurrent, garbage-collected, and requires explicit declaration of dependencies. Simple syntax and a clean type system support a number of programming styles.

Describing the Go language, the Google Blog stated:

Go attempts to combine the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. In our experiments with Go to date, typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go is designed to let you move fast.

We’re hoping Go turns out to be a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing and a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, with some cool features like true closures and reflection.

I have also embedded a YouTube TechTalk video below. Its quite lengthy and for those who really love software development and the sheer creativity of Google 🙂 Click here to visit the Go Programming Language website.