[vertex-four]

I've always argued that Go is wrong for calling itself a systems programming language. Unfortunately, entities with enough clout can single-handedly redefine language that has specific meaning to a minority of people, but where most people have no need for that language.

[infogulch]

I wouldn't disagree with this. But the golang.org website doesn't mention "system" on the homepage, or documents page. You have to go all the way to reading the spec to see the first (and only) mention of Go describing itself as:

> a general-purpose language designed with systems programming in mind

And I'm not sure this definition is actually unrepresentative.

Contrast this with rust-lang.org where "system" is the fourth word on the homepage. People like to blame Go for people being confused about what "systems language" means, but it seems to me like this is just poor branding on Rust's part.

[dbaupp]

Go rolled back a lot of their use of the systems programming label, E.g. the first version of the website http://web.archive.org/web/20091111073232/Http://golang.org has it in the heading.

[infogulch]

Sure, but before even the release of Go 1.0 [1] (which also doesn't mention "system") it's gone. Surely you wouldn't attribute the entire confusion around what a systems language is to a version of a pre-release language's website that made that statement for less than a year [2], almost seven years ago.

I don't want to think about the mental gymnastics it would take to come to that conclusion.

[1]: https://blog.golang.org/go-version-1-is-released

[2]: http://web.archive.org/web/20101001012723/http://golang.org/

[vertex-four]

When Go was announced, the creators made a huge deal around it being a "systems programming language", which many of its users - who have never had a reason to need a systems programming language, and so have no idea what one is - have parroted ever since. Just because they no longer have it on (most of) their site doesn't mean it didn't become a buzzword within the language's community.