[AnimalMuppet]

"How much a language is used" is a proxy for "how useful is the language for actually writing programs". And, really, what else do we mean by the "quality" of a programming language? If it's beautiful, but not as good for actually writing programs, then it has quality as a work of art, but less quality as a programming language.

[goatlover]

There's other reasons languages become popular such as platform support, marketing, what people learn in school or as a first language, and what gets you hired. Popularity does not necessarily imply any sort of superiority of a PL usage compared to others.

[AnimalMuppet]

I think you are going too far here. Taken at face value, your post says that for programming languages, there is zero correlation between popularity (use) and superiority (fitness for use). That implies that everyone choosing a language for a project is either stupid or ignorant (not the same thing).

That may offer consolation to those who think that certain languages are the best, and who wonder why those "best" languages are used so little. But I don't think it's true. I don't think programmers are stupid, ignorant, or sheep. I think if a tool offers them advantages, they'll use it.

Perhaps I should qualify: significant advantages. There is a cost to switching. The switched-to language has to be enough better to pay back the cost.

[rowanG077]

This is not actually true. Do you seriously believe Go would have ANY popularity now if it wasn't released and massively marketed by a BigCo?

[Jtsummers]

It probably would've ended up in the same place as Limbo and Alef. Interesting, useful, but of limited use and exposure to the world.

[AnimalMuppet]

"Massively marketed"? Compared to what? C#? Java?

I remember what Sun did with Java back in the day. No, I do not agree that Go has been massively marketed.

I will admit, however, that Go was created and supported by Google, and that mattered. It mattered, not in the publicity, but in the tools and libraries (and maybe even in the tutorials).

[rowanG077]

Compared to C++, Haskell, Python and the long list of other languages not directly backed by BigCos.

So your point is because Java has been marketed more then Go that Go is not massively marketed? If you take the set of all languages and would make a sorted list of how many hours and dollars where spend to market it then I would be very, very surprised to not see Go in the top 5.

[AnimalMuppet]

Define "market".

C++ has vendors behind it. Those vendors make actual dollars selling C++ (or at least tools that work on C++.) When Microsoft markets Dev Studio (with C++ support), is that marketing C++? How about C#?

In contrast, what does Google do to market Go? Put up a website, and put out notices of the next version? When have you ever seen an advertisement for Go? For a tool that supports Go? How about for C++, C#, and Java?

[rowanG077]

I'm being very clear. A language with a big company behind it the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. I have defined it two times now. That there are some vendors which make money with a language is very different.

Advertisement is a subset of marketing. Back in the day when Go was "new" You saw daily posts on many programmer focused communities about it. Google bankrolled the entire development of Go. Blogposts of many googlers talking about the language. Google sponsored Go events. The positive image of Google itself at the time of Go initial introduction.

You try to weasel me towards C# and Java when those are not two language I even have mentioned. But since you want to hear about. Yes both of these were also heavily marketed.

[AnimalMuppet]

But if the big company behind it doesn't do anything, what difference does it make?

Or, if the big company doesn't do anything more than is done for other languages (Rust, say), what difference does it make? Is Rust marketed in the same way Go is? Per your definitions, I would say yes, even though the Mozilla Foundation isn't a big company.

But then, is Haskell marketed in the same way? I see lots of posts on it, at least here. Lots of blogposts on it. But there's no big company, or even foundation, behind it. Is that marketing?

Why do you define a set of actions as marketing when people who work for Google do it, but not when others do it?

[dimitrios1]

Yes, considering BigCo had internal resistance against it for years, and only just recently started to adopt it more for its own internal uses. Comments like this show the clear ignorance of the context surrounding the creation of the language.

[rowanG077]

Ah yes google bankrolled the entire development for no reason. Get real. Go was specifically created for novice programmers at Google to write more safe code then C without them actually having to learn anything new.