Comment by anthk
7 hours ago
Not Google actually, but the same people from C, AWK and Unix (and 9front, which is "Unix 2.0" and it has a simpler C (no POSIX bloat there) and the compilers are basically the philosophy of Golang (cross compile from any to any arch, CSP concurrency...)
Also, the Limbo language it's basically pre-Go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Hist... : "Go was designed at Google in 2007"
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce...
https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/new_c_compilers/new_c_compil...
It was amalgamated at Google.
Originally Go used the Ken C compilers for Plan9. It still uses CSP. The syntax it's from Limbo/Inferno, and probably the GC came from Limbo too.
If any, Golang was created for Google by reusing a big chunk of plan9 and Inferno's design, in some cases even straightly, as it shows with the concurrency model. Or the cross-compiling suite.
A bit like MacOS X under Apple. We all know it wasn't born in a vacuum. It borrowed Mach, the NeXTStep API and the FreeBSD userland and they put the Carbon API on top for compatibility.
Before that, the classic MacOS had nothing to do with Unix, C, Objective C, NeXT or the Mach kernel.
Mac OS X is to NeXT what Go is for Alef/Inferno/Plan9 C. As every MacOS user it's using something like NeXTStep with the Macintosh UI design for the 21th century, Go users are like using a similar, futuristic version of the Limbo/Alef programming languages with a bit of the Plan9 concurrency and automatic crosscompilation.
That's wonderful how you tied those threads together to describe Go's philosophical origins. I'm having a great time exploring the links. And the parallel with NeXTSTEP is fascinating too, I've been interested in that part of software history since learning that Tim Berners-Lee created WorldWideWeb.app on the NeXTcube.