Microsoft has C#, IBM has REXX (and RPG, ECL, and others), Oracle has Sun, which has Java, but what does Google have? Looks like they feel they need to have a programming language of their own so they can be part of the club.
Google also isn’t one to leave money on the table. They seem to have taken their Monopoly game way too seriously. Or, maybe they just spent too much time at McDonalds eating Big Macs and playing their Monopoly game. The popular phrase, “Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200” is just a step in a game. It isn’t a directive to take over Go in order to get all the money!
With my goofy references out of the way, it should be obvious at this point that Google is presenting a new programming language dubbed Go. This is yet another C-based language proposing to make system programming easier. As stated in the Go Language FAQ, “Go is an attempt to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language.”
Go is attempting to make programming easier. It is trying to reduce the number of concepts &mdash and exceptions to those concepts — that a developer has to understand. It is trying to reduce type complexity by eliminating type hierarchies. It is trying to reduce code complexity by doing things such as eliminating forward declarations, header files, and such. It is also attempting to make networked and multicore computing easier.
It is always interesting to hear that a first-generation language is trying to simplify development. By the third or fourth generation, it is likely to be just as complicated as all the others. For example, things like pointer arithmetic, generics, exceptions, assertions, method overloading, and type inheritance all missing from Go. In time, as some of these are added, or as work-arounds are created, we’ll see if Go continues to be simply or if evolves into just another C, C++, Java type of language. After all, these languages all started much simpler too….
So what do you think? Is a new C-based programming language really needed?