Developer satisfaction with the Go programming language continues to be exceptionally high, with 92% of users expressing positive feedback, according to the results of the Go Developer Survey 2021. This marks a steady level of satisfaction compared to the previous year, reflecting Go’s enduring popularity in the developer community. However, despite its positive reception, there are still barriers preventing broader adoption of the language for certain types of projects.
Among the developers who participated in the survey but did not use Go for a specific project, a significant portion pointed to missing features and resources as the primary obstacles. 39% of respondents cited Go’s lack of essential features as a deterrent, while 34% expressed frustration with the language’s insufficient libraries. While Go excels in many areas, such gaps in functionality make it less suitable for certain complex applications or niche use cases.
One of the most frequently mentioned limitations was the absence of generics, a feature that has long been requested by the Go community. The survey was conducted before Go 1.18, which officially introduced generics to the language in March. The arrival of generics is expected to address a major pain point for developers, allowing for more flexible and reusable code. Although this feature was not available at the time of the survey, its introduction has been a highly anticipated improvement in the Go ecosystem.
Despite these challenges, Go’s strengths—such as its simplicity, performance, and strong concurrency support—continue to make it a go-to language for many developers, particularly in cloud-native and microservices architectures. As the language evolves with new features like generics, it’s likely that Go’s satisfaction ratings will continue to rise, further solidifying its place in the software development landscape.