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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

Google is the key operative word there.

Without backing/promotion from Google, Go would be completely obscure and disused.

Google could promote a language that is a complete piece of crap and it would be instantly more successful than something well-engineered from some unknown hackers.

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An interesting question is why Google did not start to use Haskell and promote it. Did they also think it was too hard or did they not see the benefits of it? Or something else

What about Dart(https://www.dartlang.org/)? Dart is developed by Google and has features that are tailored for or lend themselves to specific modern use cases i.e. IoT, mobile, and web applications. The language is only two years younger than Go but as far as I can tell has attracted nowhere near the community or adoption.

I can't find the reference, but I recall someone saying that Dart has huge adoption measured by revenue resulting from its use as an internal Google sales tool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7955819

I'm gonna go and say Bullshit on this one. Python, C, C++ all had promotion from usage more than anything else and the same is true of Golang. It is a language that attracts a community.

I would rather thank Google for letting their engineers use it and develop it than cast unproven aspersions.

Since Python and C++ were not successful due to promotion by Google (but for other reasons), you do not have a logically deductive counter-argument here.

Your counterexamples speak nothing to the validity of the proposition "if Google promotes something, it will likely be successful".

They are counterexamples to the ridiculous proposition "If, and only if, Google promotes something, it will be successful".

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