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> Go is basically a mix between Oberon-2 and Limbo, which we all know where they landed on the adoption curve. Exactly. You might say that Wirth, Mössenböck, and Winterbottom had some programming language chops, bringing some new ideas to the world, which is in line with the observation that those with programming language skills end up creating languages nobody uses. In fairness, Pike was involved in Limbo, but his only claim to fame was pressuring Winterbottom to add garbage collection to Alef, thus Limbo. > Without the adoption success of Docker and Kubernetes adding wind to Go's sails, Go would have landed on the island. Fun story, but no. Those projects chose Go because Go had already gained traction and was thought, in that moment in time, that it was going to be the way of the future. It is true that Docker is often credited as the first major success story, but Hugo, etcd, InfluxDB, etc. were all released around the same time, never mind the long list of projects that never gained popularity. The language was already being widely used by the time Docker showed up. Go didn't need a major success story to get on the radar. It had Google's marketing power behind it, or at least that's why most believe it was able to become popular without having any breakouts to its name. > They were not lacking in skills, rather politics These are not separable concepts. Politics are the result of lack of skill. |
Lots of languages are full of dead projects that never gained notoriety.
In fact, YouTube downloader which is another "success" only happened, because once again, it was a gopher that forced a RIG, it was working perfectly fine.