[nostrademons]

Also Go's 1.0 predated Rust by about 5 years. They started around the same time, but many people won't use a language that's not stable where their existing code may break with each new release. Go has had a ~5 year head start in developing a library ecosystem, tooling, commercial users, etc.

It takes a long time for a language to build momentum and a user base. Python was just starting to get popular when I graduated from college in 2005, and it was already 16 years old at the time.

[nikolay]

This is true, but even today in 2018, Golang still suffers from the dependency-management hell, the notorious GOPATH, and many other issues it should not have being almost a decade old! Even Rust, which some call "lower-level language", which it is not, has Cargo after it learned from Ruby and Node how important is to have easy package management, and being able to install a new project without knowing almost anything about the language.

[dilap]

totally fair, but Go did stablize the language itself. i can with zero effort and 100% confidence run any old Go code i have lying around. that's pretty awesome.

[greenhouse_gas]

> i can with zero effort and 100% confidence run any old Go code i have lying around. that's pretty awesome.

I think you can do that in Rust too (post 1.0). What's more impressive is that canonical go code from five years ago is still canonical.

[dilap]

whether that's impressive or not is very much a matter of perspective -- it is certainly remarkable! :-)