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The Go Programming Language

Google TechTalks · 406.4K views · 2009-11-10 · 59:26

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Overview

Rob Pike's October 2009 Google Tech Talk introducing Go, a new experimental systems language designed for fast builds, concurrency and garbage collection. It covers the goals, syntax and type system.

On Hacker News

Used as the primary source for what Go's creators originally promised, such as fast compiles, systems-language framing, safety and generics.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2009–2026

Topics

C, C++, Rust, Go & systems languagesProgramming language design
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golangrob pikelanguage designcompilation speedconcurrency

What people said

ypavan · 2009-11 · Recommendation

From the Tech Talk PDF, it is mentioned that Robert Griesemer, Ken Thompson, and Rob Pike started the project in late 2007. Ian Lance Taylor and Russ Cox joined in 2008. And the goal, as they mention, seems to have the efficiency of a statically-typed compiled language with the ease of programming of a dynamic language but with - Safety: type-safe and memory-safe. Good support for concurrency and communication. Efficient, latency-free garbage collection. High-speed compilation. They are aiming at a lightweight type system with no implicit conversions and no more 0x80ULL. A good starting point is their FAQ page and also the tech talk at youtube: [VIDEO]

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win311fwg · 2026-08 · Reference

> But looking at how adamant Go used to be on the whole "No Generics" stance What "no generics" stance? Ian Lance Taylor started working on generics before anyone outside of Google had even heard of Go and when the rest of the world found out about Go it was understood that they would come someday. "In short: not yet" — [VIDEO]

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win311fwg · 2026-08 · Reference

Does it? It was only preventable by not releasing Go, which isn't exactly the greatest of solutions. As you know from when Go was first broadcast to the world, they hadn't figured out how to make generics fit[1]. It is not like they weren't trying. Ian Lance Taylor is regarded for beginning work on generics before anyone outside of Google had even heard of Go. "In short: not yet" What was surprising is that after Go was released as an open source project, nobody across the whole wide world ever came up with a workable solution. You can sense the optimism in that original announcement that later turned to "Go might never get generics" dispair. As you'll recall, it finally took convincing Philip Wadler (of Haskell and Java generics fame) to help. Without that lucky break, which almost certainly never would have happened if Go was still some basement project used by nobody, Go probably still wouldn't have generics. [1] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Google TechTalks, played through YouTube.

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