Go Programmers Surveyed: Most Use Linux or MacOS (go.dev) 29
The Go team conducted a survey of Go Developers in August — and has just released the results. Among the findings: "90% of survey respondents saying they felt satisfied while working with Go during the prior year," while 6% said they were dissastified.
Further, the number of people working with Go continues to increase; we see evidence of this from external research like Stack Overflow's Developer Survey (which found 14% of professional developers worked with Go during the past year, a roughly 15% year-over-year increase), as well as analytics for go.dev (which show an 8% rise in visitors year-over-year). Combining this growth with a high satisfaction score is evidence that Go continues to appeal to developers, and suggests that many developers who choose to learn the language feel good about their decision long afterwards...
As in prior years, the majority of survey respondents told us they work with Go on Linux (63%) and macOS (58%) systems... We do continue to see that newer members of the Go community are more likely to be working with Windows than more experienced Go developers. We interpret this as a signal that Windows-based development is important for onboarding new developers to the Go ecosystem, and is a topic our team hopes to focus on more in 2024...
While x86-compatible systems still account for the majority of development (89%), ARM64 is also now used by a majority of respondents (56%). This adoption appears to be partly driven by Apple Silicon; macOS developers are now more likely to say they develop for ARM64 than for x86-based architectures (76% vs. 71%). However, Apple hardware isn't the only factor driving ARM64 adoption: among respondents who don't develop on macOS at all, 29% still say they develop for ARM64.
The most-preferred code editors among the surveyed Go programmers were VS Code (44%), GoLand (31%), Vim/Neovim (16%), and Emacs (3%). 52% of the survey's respondents actually selected "very satisfied" for their feelings about Go — the highest possible rating.
Other interesting findings:
As in prior years, the majority of survey respondents told us they work with Go on Linux (63%) and macOS (58%) systems... We do continue to see that newer members of the Go community are more likely to be working with Windows than more experienced Go developers. We interpret this as a signal that Windows-based development is important for onboarding new developers to the Go ecosystem, and is a topic our team hopes to focus on more in 2024...
While x86-compatible systems still account for the majority of development (89%), ARM64 is also now used by a majority of respondents (56%). This adoption appears to be partly driven by Apple Silicon; macOS developers are now more likely to say they develop for ARM64 than for x86-based architectures (76% vs. 71%). However, Apple hardware isn't the only factor driving ARM64 adoption: among respondents who don't develop on macOS at all, 29% still say they develop for ARM64.
The most-preferred code editors among the surveyed Go programmers were VS Code (44%), GoLand (31%), Vim/Neovim (16%), and Emacs (3%). 52% of the survey's respondents actually selected "very satisfied" for their feelings about Go — the highest possible rating.
Other interesting findings:
- " The top requests for improving toolchain warnings and errors were to make the messages more comprehensible and actionable; this sentiment was shared by developers of all experience levels, but was particularly strong among newer Go developers."
- "Three out of every four respondents work on Go software that also uses cloud services; this is evidence that developers see Go as a language for modern, cloud-based development."
- The experimental gonew tool (which offers predefined templates for instantiating new Go projects) "appears to solve critical problems for Go developers (especially developers new to Go) and does so in a way that matches their existing workflows for starting a new project. Based on these findings, we believe gonew can substantially reduce onboarding barriers for new Go developers and ease adoption of Go in organizations."
- And when it comes to AI, "Go developers said they are more interested in AI/ML tooling that improves the quality, reliability, and performance of code they write, rather than writing code for them."
No love for LiteIDE? (Score:3)
The first Go IDE I ran into when I was learning was LiteIDE [github.com]. Maybe I'm the only one, but it ran pretty nicely on Windows and didn't consume as many resources as VS Code or JetBrains' stuff (Intellij/GoLand/CLion). My only gripe is that LiteIDE is for Go and I stopped using that language because I don't like it (after using it professionally for 3 years).
Understandable. (Score:2)
I also only use those OSes. Linux as FOSS non-lock system for mission critical software development and macOS as a neat well integrated quality version of a *nix OS.
Haven't used windows in 22 years, my last version being Win2k. When I look at it today it seems to me only anachronistic. In a bad way.
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Windows GIU usability has gone backwards ever since "Modern" (more like back to the 80s) UI appeared where apparently its a great idea not to be able to see the demarcation of data and controls. And thats if they're not controls that only appear when you move the cursor over them. Give me a f**king break. Its like it was designed by teenagers trying to be different for the sake of it.
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I also only use those OSes. Linux as FOSS non-lock system for mission critical software development and macOS as a neat well integrated quality version of a *nix OS. Haven't used windows in 22 years, my last version being Win2k. When I look at it today it seems to me only anachronistic. In a bad way.
And I have only used Windows for 30 years, leaving apple when Jobs left. I have no end of new production tools over that time. When I see anyone using CLI from 40 years ago and herald it as the best thing ever! I question their ability to interface with the actual customer, aka Humans.
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And I have only used Windows for 30 years, leaving apple when Jobs left. I have no end of new production tools over that time. When I see anyone using CLI from 40 years ago and herald it as the best thing ever! I question their ability to interface with the actual customer, aka Humans.
Depends on who your customers are. If your customer is an average consumer then CLI is not great. If your customer is system administrator with 30 servers to oversee, they want to automate tasks. GUIs are bad at that. CLIs are much better.
That was my point (Score:2)
And I have only used Windows for 30 years, leaving apple when Jobs left. I have no end of new production tools over that time. When I see anyone using CLI from 40 years ago and herald it as the best thing ever! I question their ability to interface with the actual customer, aka Humans.
Depends on who your customers are
MAC are CLI? I guess then so is windows.... If you are managing a cluster of Mac, I feel bad for whomever. I have run rendering farms, all mixes of Windows and Linux, 20 years in VFX -- we still use GUIs -- either full on windows terminals or python tools with UI, to manage the front end because we are not living in 1979. CLI doesnt mean it serves better nor faster when you can click something in 1 second vs typing out some bash crap.
Perhaps you havent noticed the last 40 years of engineers like me do
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MAC are CLI? I guess then so is windows.... If you are managing a cluster of Mac, I feel bad for whomever.
You do know Macs are Unix underneath right? That has only been true since 2001.
I have run rendering farms, all mixes of Windows and Linux, 20 years in VFX -- we still use GUIs -- either full on windows terminals or python tools with UI, to manage the front end because we are not living in 1979. CLI doesnt mean it serves better nor faster when you can click something in 1 second vs typing out some bash crap
Sure whatever.
Perhaps you havent noticed the last 40 years of engineers like me doing endless production work on tooling for "system admins" so they can one-click their custom confgs instead of typing around like a duck.
Yes I have noticed that one-clicking does jack shit when system admins have to investigate things as part of their tasks. Can you please tell me which button to click on my web servers that tells me why one node is struggling with jobs again?
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MAC are CLI? I guess then so is windows.... If you are managing a cluster of Mac, I feel bad for whomever.
You do know Macs are Unix underneath right? That has only been true since 2001.
And windows is dos/powershell. What is your point? Like I said, MAC was made to be a GUI just like WINDOWS.
Troll better.
Re: That was my point (Score:2)
PowerShell is a command shell, like Bash or Terminal.
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Yeah, sure. For decades, Windows users would tell me how antiquated the command line is - then Microsoft released PowerShell. Now, the command line is THE BEST THING EVER!1!
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Yup. Linux servers and Mac workstations have been the norm everywhere I've worked for about the last 15 years. In a few cases there was that one person or team who insisted that they just *HAD* to use windows, couldn't (or wouldn't) do their job otherwise and, after enduring them making a fuss and deciding to accommodate, the company allowed it. But each time, they were on a separate network and on their own so far as IT or support went.
The last time I had to use windows was three jobs ago where we had a
FOSS is not Linux, macOS runs FOSS just fine (Score:2)
Linux as FOSS non-lock system for mission critical software development
FOSS is really about POSIX not Linux. Very little software is Linux specific, its overwhelmingly POSIX. FOSS software tends to run just fine under macOS. macOS is just fine for software development. Linux really enters the picture when you when you want to run on servers or on embedded, not necessarily for development.
Confirmation Bias (Score:2)
At this time is is worth pointing out that the opinions of people about a niche-tech that they are working with is basically worthless. People working with a niche tech universally chose to work with that tech and hence they are massively biased. For any tech, no matter how bad, you will always find some people that defend it and want to work with it.
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People working with a niche tech universally chose to work with that tech [...]
Nope. It would be a valid point you make with the rest of the comment, but this assumption kills it.
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Some people are simply stupid, yet convinced about their superior mental skills and insights. You qualify. How pathetic.
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Agreed. "52% of the survey's respondents actually selected "very satisfied" for their feelings about Go — the highest possible rating." Because all the ones who realized it was a TERRIBLE language designed to to write trivial programs which force you to do things a specific way stopped trying to use it and thus were not in the survey set.
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I realize it's no Python or C, but Go is by no means just some obscure niche language anymore. IEEE ranks it as the 8th most popular language [ieee.org] currently in use. And three of the seven languages that are more popular are variants of C. So you could also kind of argue for a #6 ranking.
Go is niche, and nothing wrong with that (Score:2)
Go is niche language. Its an in-house solution by one of the largest companies in the world, focusing on a niche need of that company. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. The best tool for the job at hand.
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Numerical ranking can misrepresent popularity, it tells you nothing about the shape of the curve. The reality is that of users of the top 8 languages, about 1 in 17 use Go. Go is niche by design, it's specialty is concurrent information sharing between threads or computers.
Yes but niche does not mean "small". Niche means specialized. Trucks are niche cars designed for specific purposes; however, that does not mean that trucks are not used my many people especially in some regions. For example in rural areas with farms and ranches, trucks may surpass sedans in numbers.
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What is small? Is 1/17 small?
The Go Team are high as a kite (Score:2)
"Three out of every four respondents work on Go software that also uses cloud services; this is evidence that developers see Go as a language for modern, cloud-based development."
Someone's been sniffing too much glue if they think this is "evidence" of something.
Well yes, that's just what people run theese days (Score:2)
I mean, there are still the BSDs which have their own charm, but few people run that on development machines. There used to be operating systems like Workbench, Windows or OS/2, most of which, technically speaking, are still around, but that's more or less something for retro-computing enthusiasts or special purpose computing. Nobody, except for some backwards businesses, use those.