Your average software engineer is still in love with Python.
But not those at Google, Uber, Dropbox, Soundcloud, Slack, and Medium.
The programmers at top corporations have long fallen for the language withthe cute mascot.
Thats not to say that Python is no good.
Rob Pike co-developed the Unix environment and co-created the Limbo programming language.
A language that would eliminate, or at least ease, these all-too-common problems in software engineering.
The root of many of these common problems is the complexity of modern languages.
Think of Python or C have you ever tried to read the whole documentation?
Good luck with that.
In contrast, the greatest feature of Go is its simplicity.
Thats doesnt mean you cant build complicated code with it.
But Go is very deliberate about not having features that bring more complexity without solving the problem.
For example,Go doesnt have classeslike other object-oriented languages.
Go has an alternative, called struct, that favors composition over inheritance.
Other key features of Go are:
All this might sound boring and uncreative.
Go is no language that is there to explore, to do research with.
But its amazing when youre trying to build something that works.
When youre on a team with lots of different people from different backgrounds working on the same code.
When youre tired of all of the mess that you encounter with other languages.
The times are over when programmers used to sit in their little cubicles and never meet others.
Now, we have StackExchange to solve all our coding problems.
And we have Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, and more to stay in touch with our team.
But modern languages are still tailored to the little nerd in the cubicle.
Despite being twenty years younger than Python, it has a vibrant community.
So it comes as no surprise that they put respect, openness, and friendliness atop theircode of conduct.
And on these domains, otherhot new languagesare emerging.
Apart from that, you might see that many of Pythons usages could be replaced by Go.
Indeed, developers are aware of the huge potential that Go offers.
According toHackerrank, about a third of all programmers wanted to learn Go in 2020.
But for new projects, you should at least try it.
At the biggest companies, developers are already building their success with Go.
This article was written byAri Jouryand was originally published onTowards Data Science.
