The Google Go language (Golang), the popular open source systems-level programming language, is gaining more of a foothold in the workplace, according to the Go 2017 User Survey. More respondents (67 percent) said they were being paid to write Go than those who said they write Go code outside of work (63 percent).
Also, the number of respondents who strongly agreed with the notion that Go was critical to their company’s success rose to 17 percent, up from year 12 percent in the 2016 survey.
The survey attracted 6,173 respondents, 70 percent more than the 3,595 people polled in the 2016 survey. In other findings:
- The top use of Go is now writing API/RPC services, with 65 percent reporting using the language for this. API/RPC services takes over the top spot from writing CLI tools, a use cited by 63 percent of respondents. Following these two uses were web services (49 percent), agents and daemons (44 percent), and libraries or frameworks (38 percent).
- 61 percent of respondents work in web development while 37 percent work in systems programming. Following these were devops (36 percent), network programming (32 percent), and databases (28 percent).
- 64 percent said they develop with Go on the Linux OS, followed by MacOS (49 percent) and Windows (18 percent).
- 27 percent had used Go for two to four years, while 26 percent had used it for three to 12 months. 21 percent had used it for 13 months to two years and 13 percent had used it for more than four years. Curiously, 2 percent had never used it.