github.com/graybobo/golang.org-package-offline-cache@v0.0.0-20200626051047-6608995c132f/x/blog/content/5years.article (about)

     1  Half a decade with Go
     2  10 Nov 2014
     3  
     4  Andrew Gerrand
     5  adg@golang.org
     6  
     7  * Introduction
     8  
     9  Five years ago we launched the Go project. It seems like only yesterday that we
    10  were preparing the initial public release: our
    11  [[https://web.archive.org/web/20091112094121/http://golang.org/][website]] was
    12  a lovely shade of yellow, we were calling Go a "systems language", and you had
    13  to terminate statements with a semicolon and write Makefiles to build your
    14  code. We had no idea how Go would be received. Would people share our vision
    15  and goals? Would people find Go useful?
    16  
    17  At launch, there was a flurry of attention. Google had produced a new
    18  programming language, and everyone was eager to check it out. Some programmers
    19  were turned off by Go's conservative feature set—at first glance they saw
    20  "nothing to see here"—but a smaller group saw the beginnings of an ecosystem
    21  tailored to their needs as working software engineers. These few would form the
    22  kernel of the Go community.
    23  
    24  .image 5years/gophers5th.jpg _ 850
    25  
    26  [[/gopher][_Gopher_]] _illustration_by_ [[http://reneefrench.blogspot.com.au/][_Renee_French_]]
    27  
    28  After the initial release, it took us a while to properly communicate the
    29  goals and design ethos behind Go. Rob Pike did so eloquently in his 2012 essay
    30  [[http://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article][_Go_at_Google:_Language_Design_in_the_Service_of_Software_Engineering_]] and
    31  more personally in his blog post
    32  [[http://commandcenter.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html][_Less_is_exponentially_more_]].
    33  Andrew Gerrand's
    34  [[http://vimeo.com/53221560][_Code_that_grows_with_grace_]]
    35  ([[http://talks.golang.org/2012/chat.slide][slides]]) and
    36  [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKGmK_Z1Zl0][_Go_for_Gophers_]]
    37  ([[http://talks.golang.org/2014/go4gophers.slide][slides]]) give a
    38  more in-depth, technical take on Go's design philosophy.
    39  
    40  Over time, the few became many. The turning point for the project was the
    41  release of Go 1 in March 2012, which provided a stable language and standard
    42  library that developers could trust. By 2014, the project had hundreds of core
    43  contributors, the ecosystem had countless [[https://godoc.org/][libraries and tools]]
    44  maintained by thousands of developers, and the greater community had
    45  many passionate members (or, as we call them, "gophers"). Today, by our current
    46  metrics, the Go community is growing faster than we believed possible.
    47  
    48  Where can those gophers be found? They are at the many Go events that are
    49  popping up around the world. This year we saw several dedicated Go conferences:
    50  the inaugural [[http://blog.golang.org/gophercon][GopherCon]] and
    51  [[http://www.dotgo.eu/][dotGo]] conferences in Denver and Paris, the
    52  [[http://blog.golang.org/fosdem14][Go DevRoom at FOSDEM]] and two more
    53  instances of the biannual [[https://github.com/GoCon/GoCon][GoCon]] conference
    54  in Tokyo. At each event, gophers from around the globe eagerly presented their
    55  Go projects. For the Go team, it is very satisfying to meet so many programmers
    56  that share our vision and excitement.
    57  
    58  .image 5years/conferences.jpg
    59  
    60  _More_than_1,200_gophers_attended_GopherCon_in_Denver_and_dotGo_in_Paris._
    61  
    62  There are also dozens of community-run
    63  [[http://golang.org/wiki/GoUserGroups][Go User Groups]] spread across cities
    64  worldwide. If you haven't visited your local group, consider going along. And
    65  if there isn't a group in your area, maybe you should
    66  [[https://blog.golang.org/getthee-to-go-meetup][start one]]?
    67  
    68  Today, Go has found a home in the cloud. Go arrived as the industry underwent a
    69  tectonic shift toward cloud computing, and we were thrilled to see it quickly
    70  become an important part of that movement. Its simplicity, efficiency, built-in
    71  concurrency primitives, and modern standard library make it a great fit for
    72  cloud software development (after all, that's what it was designed for).
    73  Significant open source cloud projects like
    74  [[https://www.docker.com/][Docker]] and
    75  [[https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes][Kubernetes]] have been
    76  written in Go, and infrastructure companies like Google, CloudFlare, Canonical,
    77  Digital Ocean, GitHub, Heroku, and Microsoft are now using Go to do some heavy
    78  lifting.
    79  
    80  So, what does the future hold? We think that 2015 will be Go's biggest year yet.
    81  
    82  Go 1.4—in addition to its [[http://tip.golang.org/doc/go1.4][new features and fixes]]—lays
    83  the groundwork for a new low-latency garbage collector and support for running
    84  Go on mobile devices. It is due to be released on December 1st 2014.
    85  We expect the new GC to be available in Go 1.5, due June 1st 2015, which will
    86  make Go appealing for a broader range of applications.
    87  We can't wait to see where people take it.
    88  
    89  And there will be more great events, with [[http://gothamgo.com/][GothamGo]] in
    90  New York (15 Nov), another Go DevRoom at FOSDEM in Brussels (Jan 31 and Feb 1;
    91  [[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/1xgBazQzs1I/hwrZ5ni8cTEJ][get involved!]]),
    92  [[http://www.gophercon.in/][GopherCon India]] in Bengaluru (19-21 Feb),
    93  the original [[http://gophercon.com/][GopherCon]] back at Denver in July, and
    94  [[http://www.dotgo.eu/][dotGo]] on again at Paris in November.
    95  
    96  The Go team would like to extend its thanks to all the gophers out there.
    97  Here's to the next five years.
    98  
    99  _To_celebrate_5_years_of_Go,_over_the_coming_month_the_
   100  [[http://blog.gopheracademy.com/][_Gopher_Academy_]]
   101  _will_publish_a_series_of_articles_by_prominent_Go_users._Be_sure_to_check_out_
   102  [[http://blog.gopheracademy.com/][_their_blog_]]
   103  _for_more_Go_action._