| Six years of Go |
| 10 Nov 2015 |
| |
| Andrew Gerrand |
| adg@golang.org |
| |
| * Six years of Go |
| |
| Six years ago today the Go language was released as an open source project. |
| Since then, more than 780 contributors have made over 30,000 commits to the |
| project's 22 repositories. The ecosystem continues to grow, with GitHub |
| reporting more than 90,000 Go repositories. And, offline, we see new Go events |
| and user groups pop up [[https://blog.golang.org/gophercon2015][around]] |
| [[https://blog.golang.org/gouk15][the]] |
| [[https://blog.golang.org/gopherchina][world]] with regularity. |
| |
| .image 6years-gopher.png |
| |
| In August we [[https://blog.golang.org/go1.5][released Go 1.5]], the most |
| significant release since Go 1. It features a completely |
| [[https://golang.org/doc/go1.5#gc][redesigned garbage collector]] that makes |
| the language more suitable for latency-sensitive applications; it marks the |
| transition from a C-based compiler tool chain to one |
| [[https://golang.org/doc/go1.5#c][written entirely in Go]]; and it includes |
| ports to [[https://golang.org/doc/go1.5#ports][new architectures]], with better |
| support for ARM processors (the chips that power most smartphones). |
| These improvements make Go better suited to a broader range of tasks, a trend |
| that we hope will continue over the coming years. |
| |
| Improvements to tools continue to boost developer productivity. |
| We introduced the [[https://golang.org/cmd/trace/][execution tracer]] and the |
| "[[https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Show_documentation_for_package_or_symbol][go doc]]" |
| command, as well as more enhancements to our various |
| [[https://talks.golang.org/2014/static-analysis.slide][static analysis tools]]. |
| We are also working on an |
| [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Golang-nuts/8oCSjAiKXUQ][official Go plugin for Sublime Text]], |
| with better support for other editors in the pipeline. |
| |
| Early next year we will release more improvements in Go 1.6, including |
| HTTP/2 support for [[https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/][net/http]] servers and |
| clients, an official package vendoring mechanism, support for blocks in text |
| and HTML templates, a memory sanitizer that checks both Go and C/C++ code, and |
| the usual assortment of other improvements and fixes. |
| |
| This is the sixth time we have had the pleasure of writing a birthday blog post |
| for Go, and we would not be doing so if not for the wonderful and passionate |
| people in our community. The Go team would like to thank everyone who has |
| contributed code, written an open source library, authored a blog post, helped |
| a new gopher, or just given Go a try. Without you, Go would not be as complete, |
| useful, or successful as it is today. Thank you, and celebrate! |
