Why is Go so special that it needs to be mentioned every time there's a project using it?
"written in go" comes up 540 times in the search results, vs only 196 times for "written in javascript" even though the latter is way more common than Go.
I think what is going on is that the number of times you get these "written in" postings is somehow a function of the inverse of market share and how convinced practitioners are that the language in question is so good it should be used more widely. And some timing factor.
I had expected Rust to have more "written in" articles. It has a very dedicated following, but it is struggling a bit to gain more mainstream acceptance. Go meanwhile is getting to where it is in very widespread use for a broad applications (mostly server stuff). So I had expected there to be more "written in" articles for Rust than Go as Rust needs more evangelizing.
Perhaps if we lay out the articles on a timeline we see something interesting, but I suspect my hypothesis was a bit off.
> I think what is going on is that the number of times you get these "written in" postings is somehow a function of the inverse of market share and how convinced practitioners are that the language in question is so good it should be used more widely.
I view you as correct about the market share, but incorrect about "language so good it should be used more widely". Not that Go or Rust devs don't believe that.. However, I don't think that's why these posts get upvoted. At least speaking for myself I love seeing the language it's written in.
As a Rust focused dev (for fun and profit) clearly I don't like Go posts because I believe it's the best language and all of my code should be ported. Yet I do like Go posts. Likewise I like Rust posts. I like Go posts because, like Rust, I know it will be an easy install. It will be something active, growing and "modern". I view these growing and modern languages to have more active contribution to the core project (if it's a good project of course).
I'm less interested in tools written in Python because I've had enough of difficulty in the past with Python installations that I just don't even care enough to bother. I also am less interested in a cool project written in some (I don't mean Python) other old and "dying" language. I have trouble envisioning contributions being high and trajectory reaching any critical point. Those things are important I think.
Language matters to me. It's not going to make or break a project to be written in something "odd" - but it's definitely of interest. For good or bad.
These are all my views.. most of it not fact. Please take it as such :)
I’ve never managed to like Python as a language, but I used to recommend it to beginners as a learning language. Mostly because you can do real things in it.
But I don’t much care for how the Python community has failed to produce a language, practice and tool chain that plays nice with users. It is a somewhat selfish and anti-social language environment that forces users to care about things they shouldn’t have to care about.
I am far more willing to give Go projects a try due to how slim and easy they are to install (or remove) and get running, than say rails. Java is right out for me, and I absolutely refuse to run java apps on my home server unless they're dockerized, and even then I try to avoid them.
So for me at least, being written in Go is absolutely a pro.
Given the audience here, the information may be considered interesting. For example, if I'm interested in VPN technology and want to build this, read some code or contribute to it, the language used may be a deciding factor.
As a user, it may not matter, but in this case the link is to a Github repo with 0 releases sent to a community of people who are probably more likely than average to be interested in the technical details. In that sense the question may rather be what makes JavaScript so special that it needn't be mentioned. After all, to even run it I need a special runtime environment (e.g. nodejs or a javascript enabled browser).
Security software written in a type-safe, memory-safe language is very appealing. Entire classes of vulnerabilities are removed using Go or Rust.
The same can of course be said for software written in Java and C#, except their bloated runtimes make them resource hungry and include fun side effects like human-noticeable GC pauses.
The home-grown crypto in this tool makes it rather unappealing, though.
Go gets dunked on by the likes of the RESF for being "not a real systems programming language because it has GC", or "it lacks generics, therefore it's obviously unsuited for real software engineering" that actual, performant infrastructure software written in Go is indeed intriguing.
"written in go" comes up 540 times in the search results, vs only 196 times for "written in javascript" even though the latter is way more common than Go.