Hacker News Reader

Comment by kazoomonger | Hacker News Reader

I doubt Go will be used in the future more by several times than it is now. Looking at Google Trends, we're past peak Go, it's now on the decline:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

I haven't seen anything that would indicate anything else than Go slowly declining much like Ruby has. In other words, it's still around and getting new updates, but losing mindshare.

View on HN

By that metric, doesn't Rust have an even bleaker future? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

My response was more doubting that Go is going to be used many times more than it is currently 10 years down the line, but the trend on Rust is upwards:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...

That doesn't mean it will ever achieve popularity, and could also go away.

However, with the Go developers' insistence on changing the language as little as possible (not good or bad, it just is), it seems unlikely that Go will see a resurgence that brings it to multiple times usage than it has now.

But, they are working toward Go2. Generics, which are the biggest talking point whenever Go is discussed, is already added in a branch and is supposed to come in a year or so. It'll be interesting to see how it'll affect the trends data after that.

Do they actually have people who are experienced with type theory working on the type system, or is it the same core team?

Philip Wadler ? https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11710

Not really because the difference is that the overall trend on Rust is still upwards (it's hard to see with the two languages on the same axis). I've been investigating Rust and it looks like it's going to cure the pain points I've had around C++ on a project I'm working on and I'm quite happy with it so far.

The funny is if you use "golang" as the term it peaked at a different time (2019-2020), but then there was a very sharp drop at the beginning of this year. I wonder what the reason is?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=golang&date=all&g...

Google is not perfect at distinguishing which queries for the word "Go" are actually about the Go programming language.

Referring to the language as golang is a secondary name, popularity driven by Google's own performance surfacing go (language) related results for the word go.

Go (programming language) has the same january drop as golang, clearer when both are viewed together:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=g...

I don't think Go actually is substantially less popular in Febuary 2021 than November 2021 (January/December, maybe due to people/student vacation time), but the google trends anomaly is not a go vs golang naming distinction.

That’s quite interesting. I’ve added Typescript and Ruby to the chart - apparently they are all declining in popularity. But I wonder, which language is the one currently rising then?

On the other hand, searches for "golang" matched their all-time high in July 2020.

Not sure what you mean. This chart shows the peak as being in 2019, and declining since then:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=g...

You're looking at US, the Worldwide view matches July 2020.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com