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Comment by vorg | Hacker News Reader

> Go is still young, with a long productive life ahead of it [...] compared to the number of people who will use Go during its lifetime, we are but a tiny fraction

An assumption lurking in the last paragraph. Remember JavaFX and Dart, both languages backed by large corps who then pulled their support. Go could be at the peak of its popularity, about to tank. We don't know.

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I'm thinking of Turbo Pascal for DOS. It was very popular, and then it sank to obscurity almost overnight, basically because it didn't have any answer to "how do I write a Windows program in this?" Its niche had been eliminated.

I don't think Go will vanish unless "network servers that run in text mode on unix" somehow stop being a thing. There is no Google product whose change of strategy could strand Go (unlike the others you name). If somehow all computing moves to phones and tablets, it could be stranded, but I can't imagine that happening.

> "how do I write a Windows program in this?"

Turbo Pascal for Windows, it had two releases 1.0 and 1.5, introduced the Object Windows Library later adopted by Turbo and Borland C++ for Windows.

It was replaced by Delphi with its Visual Control Library afterwards.

The problem was Borland management going nuts and no having a proper version for UNIX systems, which were gaining market share back then.

Was it not reborn as Delphi? It was always Pascal. But I do agree, a non-visual service lang is probably a thing.

Delphi was really not so bad. Back in High School we first learned with Pascal, then Delphi. It was pretty simple to put together simple Windows GUI Programs. Never really used it outside of school though.

> It was pretty simple to put together simple Windows GUI Programs.

It was one of the most powerful Windows (GUI) programming tool back then, and easy to create beautiful UI components and had great third-party components market. Plus it has incredible compilation speed.

Go on Android http://talks.golang.org/2014/gothamgo-android.slide#1

Not supported by the Android team, so don't expect to see it here:

http://developer.android.com/index.html

http://developer.android.com/ndk/index.html

It's still in its early days though from Google:

https://github.com/golang/mobile

https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Mobile

I will change my opinion when I see the Android team change their official statement that only Java matters, as communicated at Google IO 2014.

> Remember JavaFX and Dart, both languages backed by large corps who then pulled their support. Go could be at the peak of its popularity, about to tank. We don't know.

Ehh... to be fair, I don't ever recall JavaFX and Dart getting so much organic "love" from developers. Go has at least made it past the point where said corporation is trying to make it a "thing", which is more than you can say about JavaFX and Dart.

I don't get what you are speaking about JavaFX.

It has replaced Swing as the official Java UI framework, all new UI features since Java 7 is being done in JavaFX.

Swing joined AWT as legacy code and bug fixes only.

> > JavaFX and Dart, both languages

> I don't get what you are speaking about JavaFX

From context you know I meant JavaFX Script, discontinued by Oracle in 2010.

Dart won't be built into Chrome, but dart2js works fine and usage at Google is increasing. Saying that Google "pulled support" isn't accurate.

I think Go was google's alternative to buying Java, and/or Sun. As such, and given the recent concerns about Oracle's investments in the jvm (they laid off some java evangelists, and it's not at all clear to me why Oracle will be willing to fund jvm development), I think Go is going to be with us a very long time.

Seems like FUD. 549 contributors according to GitHub. Open Source. Fork it. https://github.com/golang/go

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