"Our programmers are Googlers" comment is a retcon! It was from 2014; what was the pitch before that?
In 2010 Pike presented Go as "suitable for writing systems software" [1] such as: web servers, web browsers, compilers, programming tools, IDEs, and OSes ("maybe").
Today Google makes a web browser, and lots of compilers, and programming tools, and an IDE (Android Studio), and at least two OSes (ChromeOS, Android), and Go is not relevant in any of them (excepting Go tooling).
In 2012, Pike was still pitching Go as a C++ replacement, but was dismayed that it was appealing to Python/Ruby programmers. Why don't C++ programmers use Go? He hypothesized [2]:
> C++ programmers don't come to Go because they have fought hard to gain exquisite control of their programming domain, and don't want to surrender any of it. To them, software isn't just about getting the job done, it's about doing it a certain way.
The saltiness was aimed at Google's own C++ engineers, but I honestly don't think that Go was or even is up to reimplementing v8 or Blink.
But today Go really is enormously successful and compelling. It failed at displacing C++ but found its niche. Kudos. But retcon - it is a mainly server-side language because that's where it succeeded, not what it was designed for.
Today Rust is busy displacing C++, so it can be done. Go just wasn't the one to do it.
In 2010 Pike presented Go as "suitable for writing systems software" [1] such as: web servers, web browsers, compilers, programming tools, IDEs, and OSes ("maybe").
Today Google makes a web browser, and lots of compilers, and programming tools, and an IDE (Android Studio), and at least two OSes (ChromeOS, Android), and Go is not relevant in any of them (excepting Go tooling).
In 2012, Pike was still pitching Go as a C++ replacement, but was dismayed that it was appealing to Python/Ruby programmers. Why don't C++ programmers use Go? He hypothesized [2]:
> C++ programmers don't come to Go because they have fought hard to gain exquisite control of their programming domain, and don't want to surrender any of it. To them, software isn't just about getting the job done, it's about doing it a certain way.
The saltiness was aimed at Google's own C++ engineers, but I honestly don't think that Go was or even is up to reimplementing v8 or Blink.
But today Go really is enormously successful and compelling. It failed at displacing C++ but found its niche. Kudos. But retcon - it is a mainly server-side language because that's where it succeeded, not what it was designed for.
Today Rust is busy displacing C++, so it can be done. Go just wasn't the one to do it.
1: https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100428-pike-s...
2: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...