Go Version 1 Released

New submitter smwny writes "Google's system programming language, Go, has just reached the 1.0 milestone. From the announcement: 'Go 1 is the first release of Go that is available in supported binary distributions. They are available for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and, we are thrilled to announce, Windows. ... Go 1 introduces changes to the language (such as new types for Unicode characters and errors) and the standard library (such as the new time package and renamings in the strconv package). Also, the package hierarchy has been rearranged to group related items together, such as moving the networking facilities, for instance the rpc package, into subdirectories of net. A complete list of changes is documented in the Go 1 release notes. That document is an essential reference for programmers migrating code from earlier versions of Go. ... A similar process of revision and stabilization has been applied to the App Engine libraries, providing a base for developers to build programs for App Engine that will run for years.'"

Comments

Go is already being used

[CondeZer0]

The amazing thing is that even before the first stable release is out quite a few organizations are using Go in production to run real systems. Very impressive:

http://go-lang.cat-v.org/organizations-using-go

Added value of Go?

[billcarson]

Can someone explain to me what Go's aim is, and why exactly it requires a new programming language? Is it meant a replacement for Java/C++/Python, or does it cater a new branch of programming?

Re:Added value of Go?

[Urban Garlic]

Maybe I'm too old-school, but when I think "systems language", I think about something that would be good for embedded devices or kernel device drivers, stuff that's pretty close to the metal. I wouldn't use Go for that, garbage-collection and concurrency mean there's heap traffic and IPC signaling under the hood that I probably want to control.

I agree with the "C but better" characterization, but the ways in which it's better disqualify it from being a good systems tool, I think.

Re:Rube Googleberg Machines?

[hanwen]

I write both Go and C++ at google. Sadly, Rob Pike's joke has a definite core of truth: writing C++ code at google is extremely time-consuming and difficult to get right because it has to be multi-threaded and asynchronous.

Long compile times is more of a build system problem than a compiler problem, IME. Of course, lots of people have broken build systems, and compile the same things over and over again ...

Well, our in-house developed build system is the best I've ever seen, and probably the best in the industry. Read more about it here. Even with all the niftyness of a thoroughly correct build system and a data-center sized ccache, it still sucks.

Go is definitely awesome, and I recommend everyone to set aside the gripes with the syntax and learn it. I guarantee you that you'll be pleasantly surprised.