Go Programming Language

A Go Programming Language is a statically-typed compiled language loosely based on the C language.

• AKA: golang.
• Context:
  • It can aim to achieve the Programming Ease (similar to dynamic languages).
  • It can aim to be Type-Safe and Memory-Safe.
  • It can aim to support Program Concurrency and Program Communication.
  • It can aim to have fast Program Compilation.
  • It can have a lightweight Type System (with untyped unsized constant).
• Example(s):
  • Go v1.9 (2017-08-24).
  • Go (2008).
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • C Language.
  • Python Language.
• See: Automatic Memory Management, Type Safety, Dynamic Typing, Variable-Length Array.

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References

2017a

• (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language) Retrieved:2017-3-28.
  • Go (often referred to as golang) is a free and open source programming language created at Google in 2007 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. It is a compiled, statically typed language in the tradition of Algol and C, with garbage collection, limited structural typing, memory safety features and CSP-style concurrent programming features added.

2017b

• (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#History Retrieved:2017-3-28.
  • The language was announced in November 2009. It is used in some of Google's production systems, as well as by other firms.

    Two major implementations exist:

    • Google's Go compiler, "gc", is developed as open source software and targets various platforms including Linux, OS X, Windows, various BSD and Unix versions, and also, since 2015, mobile devices, including smartphones. *A second compiler, gccgo, is a GCC frontend. The "gc" toolchain has been self-hosting since version 1.5. Go originated as an experiment by Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson to design a new programming language that would resolve common criticisms of other languages while maintaining their positive characteristics. The new language was to include the following features: * be statically typed, scalable to large systems (as Java and C++) * be productive and readable, without too many mandatory keywords and repetition ("light on the page" like dynamic languages) * not require integrated development environments, but support them well * support networking and multiprocessing
  • In later interviews, all three of the language designers cited their shared dislike of C++'s complexity as a primary motivation for designing a new language. Go 1.0 was released in March 2012.

2017c

• (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Criticism Retrieved:2017-3-28.
  • Go critics assert that:
    • lack of compile-time generics leads to code duplication, metaprogramming cannot be statically checked and standard library cannot offer generic algorithms
    • lack of language extensibility (through, for instance, operator overloading) makes certain tasks more verbose
    • the type system's lack of Hindley-Milner typing inhibiting safety and/or expressiveness
    • the pauses and overhead of garbage collection (GC) limit Go's use in systems programming compared to languages with manual memory management.
  • The language designers argue that these trade-offs are important to Go's success, and explain some particular decisions at length, though they do express openness to adding some form of generic programming in the future, and to pragmatic improvements in areas like standardizing ways to apply code generation. Regarding GC, Go defenders point to pause-time reduction in later versions (e.g. Go 1.6), while acknowledging their GC algorithm is not hard real-time.^{[citation needed]}

2017d

• (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Conventions_and_code_style Retrieved:2017-3-28.
  • The Go authors put substantial effort into molding the style and design of Go programs:
    • Indentation, spacing, and other surface-level details of code are automatically standardized by the gofmt tool. golint does additional style checks automatically.
    • Tools and libraries distributed with Go suggest standard approaches to things like API documentation (godoc ), testing (go test), building (go build), package management (go get), and so on.
    • Go enforces rules that are recommendations in other languages, for example banning cyclic dependencies, unused variables or imports, and implicit type conversions.
    • The omission of certain features (for example, functional-programming shortcuts like map and C++-style try/finally blocks) tends to encourage a particular explicit, concrete, and imperative programming style.
    • On day one the Go team published a collection of Go idioms, and later also collected code review comments, talks, official blog posts to teach Go style and coding philosophy.

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