undefined | Better HN

0 pointscoldtea9y ago0 comments

Contrary to popular legend, Google is not particularly strong on Go use, and it's not "THE official language".

It wasn't officially commissioned or officially adopted by Google to solve Google's coding problems as some believe.

It was merely initiated by a small team in Google, as their proposal for solving Google-scale coding problems. And has never been mandatory for new Google projects etc.

Go is ONE of the allowed languages, from what I know, but tons of stuff is written in Java, C++ and Python with no intentions of switching.

All those years, only a few, and basically trivial with respect to Google's needs, use examples for Go have come out of Google-land (a proxy/balancer for MySQL used in YouTube, Google Downloads caching, etc).

0 comments

2 comments · 2 top-level

geodel9y ago

Why would they switch a perfectly working software code with something in Go? Java is 15 year older than Go so obviously lot more code would be in it. More interesting case is Dart as despite having 'official' Google support, industry wide usage is rather tepid compared to Go.

lobster_johnson9y ago

Some googler claimed that Go currently has single-digit MLOC in Go, and that it's growing. But they have way more C++ and Java code.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse