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Has the popularity of Go died off recently? This is the first Go article I've seen on the front page in a while...

• mholt 12y ago
  No, it's alive and well, especially with the first-ever Gophercon in two weeks. Go 1.3 will be released this spring/summer.
• edwinnathaniel 12y ago
  When a programming language doesn't solve mass/common problems, its popularity will definitely decrease after initial peak. Rails solve common problems for the most popular platform: web. Go is created to replace C, a system programming language which could be considered as a niche. You see popular Go projects specifically addressing system level stuff (infrastructure: packer.io, docker, etc).
  • newaccountfool 12y ago
    Surely systems programming is more popular than web? As you need a system to access the web, but not every system accesses the web...? What can I do in Rails that I can't do in PHP?
    • Legion 12y ago
      > Surely systems programming is more popular than web? As you need a system to access the web, but not every system accesses the web...? "Systems programming" != "Systems software". Systems software is more widely used, but written by fewer people.
    • rubiquity 12y ago
      Systems programming is further down the layers of abstraction than Web Development is. As you go deeper and deeper down these layers there are fewer and fewer people solving the problems that the layers above depend on.
    • sehr 12y ago
      There are more web developers on this site than systems developers. What can you do in PHP that you can't do in C, or assembly, or binary...
  • Dobbs 12y ago
    > Go is created to replace C, a system programming language which could be considered as a niche. You see popular Go projects specifically addressing system level stuff (infrastructure: packer.io, docker, etc). I'd go a bit further. Go was written to replace C++ when used for servers at google and it excels in that spot. It is not meant to replace C for kernels.
  • rubiquity 12y ago
    Go was created to do the systems programming tasks people used C++ for. But what has resulted is that very few C++ users have switched to Go. It's mostly been Ruby/Python programmers and they are using Go for network programming, not systems programming. It's just another bit of proof that language designers, no matter how brilliant they are, such as Ken Thompson and Rob Pike, almost never know who is going to adopt their language and what it will be used for.
  • plg 12y ago
    " ...C, a system programming language which could be considered as a niche" wow C is now a niche language? http://langpop.com http://langpop.com http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... etc
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • edwinnathaniel 12y ago
      Not sure why C is on top of the list but having said that, I see more Rails/Java/C#/Python/PHP (or in general, web-app dev) jobs out there than a Linux kernel hackers :).
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
    You can use C on microcontrollers though, and go is not a good replacement there.
• _random_ 12y ago
  The current cohort of languages-of-the-moment is being cannibalized by the node.js silver bullet it seems.