Search giant Google launched today a new programming language named GO. It is an open source development tool geared in combining performance with speed.

Go is based from the C programming family, one of the world’s widely used programming language family trees incorporated with elements from Python (a Google-preferred language) and the Pascal/Modula/Oberon family for faster and more dynamic programs.

Google was motivated to develop a new programming language because it feels that web and computing already change tremendously but the languages have not. Computers are getting faster but software development is still slow. People were already tired of the type systems of Java and C++ and are gearing towards dynaically typed languages such as Python and Javascript. Fundamental concepts such as garbage collection and parallel computations and emergence of multicore computers are still not supported by the popular languages.

To learn more, check out Google’s hour-long tech talk video below or if you are a developer and just want to get started then take a look at the Go Tutorial and start writing those programs.