[1]Skip to main content
Open Navigation Menu

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then [3]View saved stories.

Close Alert
[5]WIRED
Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming
Language

  • [6]Security
  • [7]Politics
  • [8]Gear
  • [9]The Big Story
  • [10]Business
  • [11]Science
  • [12]Culture
  • [13]Ideas
  • [14]Merch

More
[16]Search

  • [17]Security
  • [18]Politics
  • [19]Gear
  • [20]The Big Story
  • [21]Business
  • [22]Science
  • [23]Culture
  • [24]Ideas
  • [25]Merch

  • [26]Podcasts
  • [27]Video
  • [28]Newsletters
  • [29]Magazine
  • [30]Travel
  • [31]Steven Levy's Plaintext Column
  • [32]WIRED Classics from the Archive
  • [33]Events
  • [34]WIRED Insider
  • [35]WIRED Consulting
  • [36]Jobs
  • [37]Coupons

[38]Sheon Han
[39]Business
Sep 23, 2024 6:30 AM

Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming
Language

The language Go hails from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer
commercial ambitions. My generation of strivers has a lot to learn.
A marbel squirrel sculpture in a garden
ILLUSTRATION: SAMUEL TOMSON
Save
Save

Many of today’s programmers—excuse me, software engineers—consider themselves
“creatives.” Artists of a sort. They are given to ostentatious personal
websites with cleverly hidden Easter eggs and parallax scrolling; they confer
upon themselves multihyphenate job titles
(“ex-Amazon-engineer-investor-author”) and crowd their laptops with
identity-signaling vinyl stickers. Some regard themselves as literary
sophisticates. Consider the references smashed into certain product names:
Apache Kafka, ScyllaDB, Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

[42]Machine Readable
An 8 bit lips character looking suspicious with its hand on its chin.
A regular column about programming. Because if/when the machines take over, we
should at least speak their language.

Much of that, I admit, applies to me. The difference is I’m a tad short on
talents to hyphenate, and my toy projects—with names like “Nabokov” (I know, I
know)—are better off staying on my laptop. I entered this world pretty much the
moment [43]software engineering overtook banking as the most reviled
profession. There’s a lot of hatred, and self-hatred, to contend with.

Perhaps this is why I see the ethos behind the programming language Go as both
a rebuke and a potential corrective to my generation of strivers. Its creators
hail from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial
ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose language of the
new millennium—not the best at any one thing, but nearly the best at nearly
everything. A model for our flashy times.

If I were to categorize programming languages like art movements, there would
be mid-century utilitarianism (Fortran, COBOL), high-theory formalism (Haskell,
Agda), Americorporate pragmatism (C#, Java), grassroots communitarianism
(Python, Ruby), and esoteric hedonism (Befunge, Brainfuck). And I’d say Go,
often described as “C for the 21st century,” represents neoclassicism: not so
much a revolution as a throwback.

Back in 2007, three programmers at Google came together around the shared sense
that standard languages like C++ and Java had become hard to use and poorly
adapted to the current, more cloud-oriented computing environment. One was Ken
Thompson, formerly of Bell Labs and a recipient of the Turing Award for his
work on Unix, the mitochondrial Eve of operating systems. (These days, OS
people don’t mess with programming languages—doing both is akin to an Olympic
high jumper also qualifying for the marathon.) Joining him was Rob Pike,
another Bell Labs alum who, along with Thompson, created the Unicode encoding
standard UTF-8. You can thank them for your emoji.

Watching these doyens of programming create Go was like seeing Scorsese, De
Niro, and Pesci reunite for The Irishman. Even its flippantly SEO-unfriendly
name could be forgiven. I mean, the sheer chutzpah of it. A move only the
reigning search engine king would dare.

The language quickly gained traction. The prestige of Google must’ve helped,
but I assume there was an unmet hunger for novelty. By 2009, the year of Go’s
debut, the youngest of mainstream languages were mostly still from 1995—a true
annus mirabilis, when Ruby, PHP, Java, and JavaScript all came out.

It wasn’t that advancements in programming language design had stalled.
Language designers are a magnificently brainy bunch, many with a reformist zeal
for dislodging the status quo. But what they end up building can sometimes
resemble a starchitect’s high-design marvel that turns out to have drainage
problems. Most new languages never overcome basic performance issues.

But from the get-go, Go was (sorry) ready to go. I once wrote a small search
engine in Python for sifting through my notes and documents, but it was
unusably sluggish. Rewritten in Go, my pitiful serpent grew wings and took off,
running 30 times faster. As some astute readers might have guessed, this
program was my “Nabokov.”

Most Popular

  • [44]
    The Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18
    Gear
    [45]
    The Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18
    By Julian Chokkattu
  • [46]
    How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet
    Culture
    [47]
    How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet
    By Kyle MacNeill
  • [48]
    Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs
    Gear
    [49]
    Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs
    By Julian Chokkattu
  • [50]
    The Best Espresso Machines for the Home Barista
    Gear
    [51]
    The Best Espresso Machines for the Home Barista
    By Jaina Grey
  • 

This is not to say that Go is a perfect language. It’s more workhorse than show
horse. And it came out 15 years ago, enough time for a stream of breakup
stories and critiques to cycle through the industry’s paper of record, Hacker
News.

To wit: Many find Go code ugly. There’s a procrustean uniformity to it, and it
lacks the tidy shorthands of, say, Ruby or Python, so even common patterns can
become messy and cluttered. (Ask a Go programmer about “error handling.”) Also,
you can’t run the code, even with correct syntax, unless certain styles are
strictly followed. Imagine a word processor that does not allow you to save
unless your essay is free of grammatical errors.

I’m happy to admit that Go lacks the ergonomics of newer languages. But I
struggle to dispel the suspicion that these are the complaints of a spoiled
era. If the chief engineer of the first-generation Ford Mustang were tasked
with designing a new line of cars, and did so remarkably—models of practicality
and workmanship—would you complain about them having no touchscreens?

It’s odd to think how young the field of computer science is. Alan Turing’s
paper that launched the field is less than a century old, and we live in a
small window of time where pioneers are alive and professionally active, even
into their eighties. Go is a language created by people who had nothing left to
prove.

I hope it isn’t too contrived to speak of a “late style” in programming. The
idea is usually attributed to the German philosopher Theodor Adorno, who
observed a growing contradiction and alienation in Beethoven’s later work. The
literary critic Edward Said expanded on the notion in his posthumous book On
Late Style, discussing how some artists, when facing impending mortality,
reject traditional artistic closure and instead embrace fragmentation and
unresolved tension.

What I find more intriguing—and rarer than we might have thought—are the cases
where masters in their later years do accept a certain closure and, as Said put
it, maintain a “spirit of reconciliation and serenity.” Social media has
provided us with the disappointing yet sobering spectacle wherein supposedly
accomplished individuals—since we’re talking technology here, certain computer
scientists in AI who shall remain nameless come to mind—regularly engage in
unseemly reckonings with their residual baggage.

But when I think about Go, I feel a sense of serenity. Instead of involving
themselves in spats with young kvetchers, the Go team directs you to their FAQ
page—the gold standard of FAQ pages—written in a gentle, statesmanlike tone.
And with that, they rest their case. I suppose that’s where some people do end
up: completely, even plainly, at ease with their work. To know it’s possible,
someday, perhaps, is a balm. Maybe my generation will learn to tame our egos
and find our footing. We still have a few decades to make it so.

You Might Also Like …

  • In your inbox: Our [52]biggest stories, handpicked for you each day

  • Inside [53]Google’s 7-year mission to give AI a robot body

  • The Big Interview: [54]Mark Cuban wants to fight pharma’s middlemen

  • [55]The world’s biggest bitcoin mine is rattling this Texas oil town

  • Event: Join us for [56]WIRED Health on March 18 in London

[57]Sheon Han is a writer and programmer based in Palo Alto, California. His
work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Quanta Magazine, and
elsewhere.

Topics[58]Machine Readable[59]coding[60]programming[61]Computers[62]computer
science[63]software[64]Google
Read More
[65]
OpenAI Announces a New AI Model, Code-Named Strawberry, That Solves Difficult
Problems Step by Step
[66]
OpenAI Announces a New AI Model, Code-Named Strawberry, That Solves Difficult
Problems Step by Step
The ChatGPT maker reveals details of what’s officially known as OpenAI o1,
which shows that AI needs more than scale to advance.
Will Knight
[67]
The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder
[68]
The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder
Stanford computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is unveiling a startup that aims to
teach AI systems deep knowledge of physical reality. Investors are throwing
money at it.
Steven Levy
[69]
Inside Google’s 7-Year Mission to Give AI a Robot Body
[70]
Inside Google’s 7-Year Mission to Give AI a Robot Body
As the head of Alphabet’s AI-powered robotics moonshot, I came to believe many
things. For one, robots can’t come soon enough. For another, they shouldn’t
look like us.
Hans Peter Brondmo
[71]
This New Tech Puts AI In Touch With Its Emotions&-and Yours
[72]
This New Tech Puts AI In Touch With Its Emotions—and Yours
Hume AI, a startup founded by a psychologist who specializes in measuring
emotion, gives some top large language models a realistic human voice.
Will Knight
[73]
Crispr-Enhanced Viruses Are Being Deployed Against UTIs
[74]
Crispr-Enhanced Viruses Are Being Deployed Against UTIs
With antibiotics losing their effectiveness, one company is turning to gene
editing and bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—to combat infections.
Emily Mullin
[75]
This iPhone ‘Supercycle’ May Not Be So Super
[76]
This iPhone ‘Supercycle’ May Not Be So Super
Some Apple analysts believe AI will spur a boom in iPhone sales. But not
everyone’s buying the hype.
Lauren Goode
[77]
Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type
[78]
Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type
The Vision Pro uses 3D avatars on calls and for streaming. These researchers
used eye tracking to work out the passwords and PINs people typed with their
avatars.
Matt Burgess
[79]
An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic
[80]
An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic
Cedric Dark is a gun-owning emergency physician, a father, and the cousin of a
man who was shot to death. This is what he—and the science—say needs to change.
Cedric Dark
[81]WIRED
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information
and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED
conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our
lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and
innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and
new industries.

More From WIRED

  • [83]Subscribe
  • [84]Newsletters
  • [85]FAQ
  • [86]WIRED Staff
  • [87]Editorial Standards
  • [88]Archive
  • [89]RSS
  • [90]Accessibility Help

Reviews and Guides

  • [92]Reviews
  • [93]Buying Guides
  • [94]Mattresses
  • [95]Electric Bikes
  • [96]Soundbars
  • [97]Streaming Guides
  • [98]Wearables
  • [99]TVs
  • [100]Coupons
  • [101]Code Guarantee

  • [102]Advertise
  • [103]Contact Us
  • [104]Customer Care
  • [105]Jobs
  • [106]Press Center
  • [107]Condé Nast Store
  • [108]User Agreement
  • [109]Privacy Policy
  • [110]Your California Privacy Rights

© 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from
products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate
Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced,
distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior
written permission of Condé Nast. [111]Ad Choices

Select international site

United States

  • [113]Italia
  • [114]Japón
  • [115]Czech Republic & Slovakia

  • [116]
  • [117]
  • [118]
  • [119]
  • [120]
  • [121]


References:

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/attention-spoiled-software-engineers-take-a-lesson-from-googles-programming-language/#main-content
[3] https://www.wired.com/account/saved
[5] https://www.wired.com/
[6] https://www.wired.com/category/security/
[7] https://www.wired.com/category/politics/
[8] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/
[9] https://www.wired.com/category/big-story/
[10] https://www.wired.com/category/business/
[11] https://www.wired.com/category/science/
[12] https://www.wired.com/category/culture/
[13] https://www.wired.com/category/ideas/
[14] https://shop.wired.com/
[16] https://www.wired.com/search/
[17] https://www.wired.com/category/security/
[18] https://www.wired.com/category/politics/
[19] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/
[20] https://www.wired.com/category/big-story/
[21] https://www.wired.com/category/business/
[22] https://www.wired.com/category/science/
[23] https://www.wired.com/category/culture/
[24] https://www.wired.com/category/ideas/
[25] https://shop.wired.com/
[26] https://www.wired.com/podcasts/
[27] https://www.wired.com/video/
[28] https://www.wired.com/newsletter?sourceCode=navbar
[29] https://www.wired.com/magazine
[30] http://wired.com/travel
[31] https://www.wired.com/tag/plaintext/
[32] https://www.wired.com/tag/wired-classic/
[33] https://www.wired.com/tag/wired-events/
[34] https://www.wired.com/category/wiredinsider/
[35] https://www.wired.com/tag/wired-consulting/
[36] https://jobs.wired.com/?source=navbar
[37] https://www.wired.com/coupons
[38] https://www.wired.com/author/sheon-han/
[39] https://www.wired.com/category/business
[42] https://www.wired.com/tag/machine-readable/
[43] https://www.wired.com/tag/programming/
[44] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-iphone-ios-18-ipados-18-new-features/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[45] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-iphone-ios-18-ipados-18-new-features/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[46] https://www.wired.com/story/carlo-acutis-millennial-patron-saint-internet/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[47] https://www.wired.com/story/carlo-acutis-millennial-patron-saint-internet/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[48] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-office-chairs/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[49] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-office-chairs/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[50] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-espresso-machines/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[51] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-espresso-machines/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
[52] https://www.wired.com/newsletter/daily?sourceCode=BottomStories
[53] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-mission-to-give-ai-robot-body/
[54] https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-after-shark-tank-mark-cuban-just-wants-to-break-shit-especially-the-prescription-drug-industry/
[55] https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-biggest-bitcoin-mine-is-rattling-this-texas-oil-town/
[56] https://health.wired.com/?sourceCode=BottomStories
[57] https://www.wired.com/author/sheon-han/
[58] https://www.wired.com/tag/machine-readable/
[59] https://www.wired.com/tag/coding/
[60] https://www.wired.com/tag/programming/
[61] https://www.wired.com/tag/computers/
[62] https://www.wired.com/tag/computer-science/
[63] https://www.wired.com/tag/software/
[64] https://www.wired.com/tag/google/
[65] https://www.wired.com/story/openai-o1-strawberry-problem-reasoning/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[66] https://www.wired.com/story/openai-o1-strawberry-problem-reasoning/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[67] https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-the-godmother-of-ai-wants-everyone-to-be-a-world-builder/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[68] https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-the-godmother-of-ai-wants-everyone-to-be-a-world-builder/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[69] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-mission-to-give-ai-robot-body/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[70] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-mission-to-give-ai-robot-body/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[71] https://www.wired.com/story/hume-ai-emotional-intelligence/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[72] https://www.wired.com/story/hume-ai-emotional-intelligence/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[73] https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-enhanced-viruses-are-being-deployed-against-utis/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[74] https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-enhanced-viruses-are-being-deployed-against-utis/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[75] https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-16-supercycle/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[76] https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-16-supercycle/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[77] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-vision-pro-persona-eye-tracking-spy-typing/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[78] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-vision-pro-persona-eye-tracking-spy-typing/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[79] https://www.wired.com/story/an-er-doctors-cure-for-americas-gun-epidemic/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[80] https://www.wired.com/story/an-er-doctors-cure-for-americas-gun-epidemic/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
[81] https://www.wired.com/
[83] https://www.wired.com/subscribe/
[84] https://www.wired.com/newsletter?sourceCode=HeaderAndFooter
[85] https://www.wired.com/about/faq/
[86] https://www.wired.com/about/wired-staff/
[87] https://www.wired.com/about/wired-on-background-policy/
[88] https://archive.wired.com/t/storefront/storefront
[89] https://www.wired.com/about/rss-feeds/
[90] https://www.wired.com/about/accessibility-help/
[92] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/reviews/
[93] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/buying-guides/
[94] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-mattresses/
[95] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-electric-bikes/
[96] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-soundbars/
[97] https://www.wired.com/tag/culture-guides/
[98] https://www.wired.com/tag/wearables/
[99] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-tvs/
[100] https://www.wired.com/tag/coupons/
[101] https://www.wired.com/coupons/info/code-guarantee.html
[102] https://www.condenast.com/brands/wired
[103] https://www.wired.com/about/feedback/
[104] https://subscriptions.wired.com/pubs/N3/WIR/Register.jsp?cds_page_id=175371&cds_mag_code=WIR&id=1423757547774&lsid=50431012277019467&vid=1
[105] https://www.wired.com/about/wired-jobs/
[106] https://www.wired.com/about/press/
[107] https://www.condenaststore.com/
[108] https://www.condenast.com/user-agreement/
[109] http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy
[110] http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-california
[111] http://www.aboutads.info/
[113] https://www.wired.it/
[114] https://wired.jp/
[115] https://www.wired.cz/
[116] https://www.facebook.com/wired/
[117] https://twitter.com/wired/
[118] https://pinterest.com/wired/
[119] https://www.youtube.com/user/wired/
[120] https://instagram.com/wired/
[121] https://www.tiktok.com/@wired?lang=en