The Go programming language is a new open source project from Google, that aims to make programmers more productive. It claims to be a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language. It is being hyped to the extent that it is difficult to find an unbiased opinion about the language. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate Go to see if it makes a newcomer a productive programmer, mainly focusing on ease-of-use, development time and restrictions or disadvantages.
The origins and design decisions of the language are presented, and is followed by an introduction to the syntax and features of Go. The language is evaluated by programming a small web application, and analysing the work done. The closing discussion concludes that Go is a powerful language that can improve programmers productivity.