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 # Half a decade with Go
 10 Nov 2014
 Summary: Happy 5th birthday, Go!

 Andrew Gerrand
 adg@golang.org

 ##

 Five years ago we launched the Go project. It seems like only yesterday that we
 were preparing the initial public release: our
 [website](https://web.archive.org/web/20091112094121/http://golang.org/) was
 a lovely shade of yellow, we were calling Go a "systems language", and you had
 to terminate statements with a semicolon and write Makefiles to build your
 code. We had no idea how Go would be received. Would people share our vision
 and goals? Would people find Go useful?

 At launch, there was a flurry of attention. Google had produced a new
 programming language, and everyone was eager to check it out. Some programmers
 were turned off by Go's conservative feature set—at first glance they saw
 "nothing to see here"—but a smaller group saw the beginnings of an ecosystem
 tailored to their needs as working software engineers. These few would form the
 kernel of the Go community.

 .image 5years/gophers5th.jpg _ 850

 [_Gopher_](/gopher) _illustration by_ [_Renee French_](http://reneefrench.blogspot.com.au/)

 After the initial release, it took us a while to properly communicate the
 goals and design ethos behind Go. Rob Pike did so eloquently in his 2012 essay
 [_Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering_](https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article) and
 more personally in his blog post
 [_Less is exponentially more_](https://commandcenter.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html).
 Andrew Gerrand's
 [_Code that grows with grace_](http://vimeo.com/53221560)
 ([slides](https://talks.golang.org/2012/chat.slide)) and
 [_Go for Gophers_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKGmK_Z1Zl0)
 ([slides](https://talks.golang.org/2014/go4gophers.slide)) give a
 more in-depth, technical take on Go's design philosophy.

 Over time, the few became many. The turning point for the project was the
 release of Go 1 in March 2012, which provided a stable language and standard
 library that developers could trust. By 2014, the project had hundreds of core
 contributors, the ecosystem had countless [libraries and tools](https://godoc.org/)
 maintained by thousands of developers, and the greater community had
 many passionate members (or, as we call them, "gophers"). Today, by our current
 metrics, the Go community is growing faster than we believed possible.

 Where can those gophers be found? They are at the many Go events that are
 popping up around the world. This year we saw several dedicated Go conferences:
 the inaugural [GopherCon](https://blog.golang.org/gophercon) and
 [dotGo](http://www.dotgo.eu/) conferences in Denver and Paris, the
 [Go DevRoom at FOSDEM](https://blog.golang.org/fosdem14) and two more
 instances of the biannual [GoCon](https://github.com/GoCon/GoCon) conference
 in Tokyo. At each event, gophers from around the globe eagerly presented their
 Go projects. For the Go team, it is very satisfying to meet so many programmers
 that share our vision and excitement.

 .image 5years/conferences.jpg

 _More than 1,200 gophers attended GopherCon in Denver and dotGo in Paris._

 There are also dozens of community-run
 [Go User Groups](https://golang.org/wiki/GoUserGroups) spread across cities
 worldwide. If you haven't visited your local group, consider going along. And
 if there isn't a group in your area, maybe you should
 [start one](https://blog.golang.org/getthee-to-go-meetup)?

 Today, Go has found a home in the cloud. Go arrived as the industry underwent a
 tectonic shift toward cloud computing, and we were thrilled to see it quickly
 become an important part of that movement. Its simplicity, efficiency, built-in
 concurrency primitives, and modern standard library make it a great fit for
 cloud software development (after all, that's what it was designed for).
 Significant open source cloud projects like
 [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) and
 [Kubernetes](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes) have been
 written in Go, and infrastructure companies like Google, CloudFlare, Canonical,
 Digital Ocean, GitHub, Heroku, and Microsoft are now using Go to do some heavy
 lifting.

 So, what does the future hold? We think that 2015 will be Go's biggest year yet.

 Go 1.4—in addition to its [new features and fixes](https://golang.org/doc/go1.4)—lays
 the groundwork for a new low-latency garbage collector and support for running
 Go on mobile devices. It is due to be released on December 1st 2014.
 We expect the new GC to be available in Go 1.5, due June 1st 2015, which will
 make Go appealing for a broader range of applications.
 We can't wait to see where people take it.

 And there will be more great events, with [GothamGo](http://gothamgo.com/) in
 New York (15 Nov), another Go DevRoom at FOSDEM in Brussels (Jan 31 and Feb 1;
 [get involved!](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/1xgBazQzs1I/hwrZ5ni8cTEJ)),
 [GopherCon India](http://www.gophercon.in/) in Bengaluru (19-21 Feb),
 the original [GopherCon](http://gophercon.com/) back at Denver in July, and
 [dotGo](http://www.dotgo.eu/) on again at Paris in November.

 The Go team would like to extend its thanks to all the gophers out there.
 Here's to the next five years.

 _To celebrate 5 years of Go, over the coming month the_
 [_Gopher Academy_](http://blog.gopheracademy.com/)
 _will publish a series of articles by prominent Go users. Be sure to check out_
 [_their blog_](http://blog.gopheracademy.com/)
 _for more Go action._
	# Half a decade with Go
	10 Nov 2014
	Summary: Happy 5th birthday, Go!

	Andrew Gerrand
	adg@golang.org

	##

	Five years ago we launched the Go project. It seems like only yesterday that we
	were preparing the initial public release: our
	[website](https://web.archive.org/web/20091112094121/http://golang.org/) was
	a lovely shade of yellow, we were calling Go a "systems language", and you had
	to terminate statements with a semicolon and write Makefiles to build your
	code. We had no idea how Go would be received. Would people share our vision
	and goals? Would people find Go useful?

	At launch, there was a flurry of attention. Google had produced a new
	programming language, and everyone was eager to check it out. Some programmers
	were turned off by Go's conservative feature set—at first glance they saw
	"nothing to see here"—but a smaller group saw the beginnings of an ecosystem
	tailored to their needs as working software engineers. These few would form the
	kernel of the Go community.

	.image 5years/gophers5th.jpg _ 850

	[_Gopher_](/gopher) _illustration by_ [_Renee French_](http://reneefrench.blogspot.com.au/)

	After the initial release, it took us a while to properly communicate the
	goals and design ethos behind Go. Rob Pike did so eloquently in his 2012 essay
	[_Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering_](https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article) and
	more personally in his blog post
	[_Less is exponentially more_](https://commandcenter.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html).
	Andrew Gerrand's
	[_Code that grows with grace_](http://vimeo.com/53221560)
	([slides](https://talks.golang.org/2012/chat.slide)) and
	[_Go for Gophers_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKGmK_Z1Zl0)
	([slides](https://talks.golang.org/2014/go4gophers.slide)) give a
	more in-depth, technical take on Go's design philosophy.

	Over time, the few became many. The turning point for the project was the
	release of Go 1 in March 2012, which provided a stable language and standard
	library that developers could trust. By 2014, the project had hundreds of core
	contributors, the ecosystem had countless [libraries and tools](https://godoc.org/)
	maintained by thousands of developers, and the greater community had
	many passionate members (or, as we call them, "gophers"). Today, by our current
	metrics, the Go community is growing faster than we believed possible.

	Where can those gophers be found? They are at the many Go events that are
	popping up around the world. This year we saw several dedicated Go conferences:
	the inaugural [GopherCon](https://blog.golang.org/gophercon) and
	[dotGo](http://www.dotgo.eu/) conferences in Denver and Paris, the
	[Go DevRoom at FOSDEM](https://blog.golang.org/fosdem14) and two more
	instances of the biannual [GoCon](https://github.com/GoCon/GoCon) conference
	in Tokyo. At each event, gophers from around the globe eagerly presented their
	Go projects. For the Go team, it is very satisfying to meet so many programmers
	that share our vision and excitement.

	.image 5years/conferences.jpg

	_More than 1,200 gophers attended GopherCon in Denver and dotGo in Paris._

	There are also dozens of community-run
	[Go User Groups](https://golang.org/wiki/GoUserGroups) spread across cities
	worldwide. If you haven't visited your local group, consider going along. And
	if there isn't a group in your area, maybe you should
	[start one](https://blog.golang.org/getthee-to-go-meetup)?

	Today, Go has found a home in the cloud. Go arrived as the industry underwent a
	tectonic shift toward cloud computing, and we were thrilled to see it quickly
	become an important part of that movement. Its simplicity, efficiency, built-in
	concurrency primitives, and modern standard library make it a great fit for
	cloud software development (after all, that's what it was designed for).
	Significant open source cloud projects like
	[Docker](https://www.docker.com/) and
	[Kubernetes](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes) have been
	written in Go, and infrastructure companies like Google, CloudFlare, Canonical,
	Digital Ocean, GitHub, Heroku, and Microsoft are now using Go to do some heavy
	lifting.

	So, what does the future hold? We think that 2015 will be Go's biggest year yet.

	Go 1.4—in addition to its [new features and fixes](https://golang.org/doc/go1.4)—lays
	the groundwork for a new low-latency garbage collector and support for running
	Go on mobile devices. It is due to be released on December 1st 2014.
	We expect the new GC to be available in Go 1.5, due June 1st 2015, which will
	make Go appealing for a broader range of applications.
	We can't wait to see where people take it.

	And there will be more great events, with [GothamGo](http://gothamgo.com/) in
	New York (15 Nov), another Go DevRoom at FOSDEM in Brussels (Jan 31 and Feb 1;
	[get involved!](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/1xgBazQzs1I/hwrZ5ni8cTEJ)),
	[GopherCon India](http://www.gophercon.in/) in Bengaluru (19-21 Feb),
	the original [GopherCon](http://gophercon.com/) back at Denver in July, and
	[dotGo](http://www.dotgo.eu/) on again at Paris in November.

	The Go team would like to extend its thanks to all the gophers out there.
	Here's to the next five years.

	_To celebrate 5 years of Go, over the coming month the_
	[_Gopher Academy_](http://blog.gopheracademy.com/)
	_will publish a series of articles by prominent Go users. Be sure to check out_
	[_their blog_](http://blog.gopheracademy.com/)
	_for more Go action._