Google has launched Go

Google has launched Go, a new programming language focusing on concurrency, simplicity, and performance.

Go is open source. It uses an expressive C/C++-similar language with pointer but no pointer arithmetic. It is type safe and memory safe. However, one of its main goals is to offer the speed and safety of a static language but with the advantages offered by modern dynamic languages. Go also offers methods for any type, closures and run-time reflection. The syntax is pretty clean and it is garbage collected. It is intended to compete with C and C++ as a systems programming language.

It features mulitcore programming by providing lightweight concurrency allowing developers to create sets of lightweight communicating processes, called "goroutines". You can run many concurrent goroutines and you don't need to worry about stack overflows. Goroutines aren't threads, they are functions running in parallel with other goroutines in the same address space. It is very easy to launch parallel functions using the goroutines. This is one of the most interesting features offered by the language. It really simplifies concurrency for systems programming.

© Copyright 2009, Tomas Elfving