Go programming gains in the workplace

Workplace usage of Google’s Go language is expanding, according to the Go Developer Survey 2020. And like last year’s survey, this year’s results show the predominant industry where Go developers work is the technology industry.

The Go Developer Survey 2020, published March 9, found that 76% of respondents were using the Go language at work, compared to 73% last year; 66% said Go was critical to their company’s success, up from 59% in the 2019 survey. Forty-six percent of respondents said technology was their primary industry, compared to 43% in 2019, followed by 12% citing financial services in the 2020 survey.

Overall satisfaction with the language was at 92%. There was almost universal adoption of Go modules, with 96% regularly using them for Go package management. And only 26% of respondents said that Go was missing a critical language feature that they needed. Among those who did need a critical missing feature, 88% of them said they needed generics, 58% said they needed better error handling, and 44% said they needed null safety. (Generics could arrive in Go later this year. A formal proposal for the capability was announced in January.)

The survey gathered 9,648 responses, although not everyone answered every question. Some questions were shown to all while other questions were shown to a random subset of respondents.

Other findings of the Go Developer Survey 2020:

• 53% program in another language other than Go at work, down from 54% last year and 63% in 2018.
• 68% work with Go in web programming, followed by 46% in databases and 42% in devops.
• 33% said it took them from one to three months to be productive with Go.
• Linux led the way as the most commonly used platform for Go developers, at 63%, followed by 55% who reported developing with Go on MacOS.
• Visual Studio Code was the most popular editor used with Go, with 41% of respondents using it.