Google's Go Is Promising, but Still in Diapers

From PC World: Google's Go could improve on existing programming languages by simplifying development without sacrificing application performance, but it will likely take years for Go to attain an established position that will allow it to have a noticeable impact.

Consequently, it will be crucial for Google to commit to Go for the long term, working hard at championing and strengthening it. Otherwise, the open-source Go won't fulfill its stated potential of offering the development speed of dynamic languages like Python with the robustness of compiled languages like C++.

"I'd love to see a compiled, fast language like this take off in the Web development world. Developers have been trying to speed up development time with languages and frameworks for the past four to five years -- Ruby on Rails, Django, CodeIgniter -- but have been sacrificing application performance in that pursuit," said Michael Wales, senior developer with General Dynamics Information Technology.

"Google's goal is to develop a language that is not only efficient for the developer, in terms of developing an application, but is also efficient for the computer, in processing time/memory usage, and the business processes of that application [like] security, concurrency," Wales added in an e-mail interview.

Still, Go is very much at a baby stage right now, and Google and the open-source community that gathers around the project have their work cut out for them.

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