Go is a programming language created by Google to help solve their problems of managing large codebases and teams of engineers. It was designed for productivity, scalability, and simplicity. Some key facts are that Go is now over half a decade old, was created by notable programmers like Ken Thompson, and is used widely at Google and elsewhere due to its good standard library and ability to compile to machine code for easy deployment. The future of Go includes expanded platform support and ongoing improvements to areas like garbage collection.

1. Write in Go half a decade old now...

2. What is Go? • Productive • Scalable • Garbage-collected • Simple • Fun

3. What is the motivation behind this language? • Go is a programming language designed by Google • It's designed to help solve Google's problems • Google has BIG problems • Problems include, thousands of engineers, C++, Java, Python... • And lots of machines and code...

4. Who made this thing? • Ken Thompson (B, C, Unix, UTF-8) • Rob Pike (Unix, UTF-8) • Robert Griesemer (Hotspot, JVM) • And a few other engineers at Google

5. Something to bear in mind... • Go was designed for and by people who write, read, debug large software • Go's purpose is not research programming language • Go is here to make programming easier for the team and the business • Go is amazingly productive and simple to maintain • Go helps you become a better programmer

6. Who's using it?

7. Packages • Go core packages are amazing • Supports most of the requirements • Lots of solid third party packages • Core packages maintained by Google

8. Deployment • Compiles to machine code • go build <package name> • No more Spacewalk • No more source code on production servers • Runtime errors sorted well before

9. a few useful Go commands • go fmt • go tool pprof (live profiling) • go get • go test • godoc

10. Future of Go • 1.4 - start of Android support (1 Dec 2014) • 1.5 - iOS support planned (mid next year) • 1.5 - GOTRACE - emits Chrome trace viewer • 1.5 - GC concurrent no stopping the world • Lots of excellent features too many to list here

11. Thank you! any questions?