Google has managed to incorporate input from developers without letting the open-source project spin out of control, some developers said.

"Open source does not mean anarchy. Somebody has to have a vision and the perseverance to see that through. The open source community can then create their own versions if they wish, but it is best if there is a main line, stable version with a consistent architecture with a guiding force behind it," Gordon said.

"I really appreciate that Go's authors are being very strict about formatting rules, and appear to be willing to push back against feature creep in order to keep the compiler/toolchain simple," Bourgon said. "It's an attitude I would have if I were doing their job, and I think at the end of the day it makes the language a lot stronger."

Google started planning Go in September 2007 and created a full-time team for it over a year ago. It was conceived as a language for systems programming, such as Web servers, storage systems and databases.

At this point, Go isn't mature enough for critical applications, but it is stable enough for "simple Web servers, text processing and other such things," Rob Pike, a Google software engineer who is one of the leaders of the Go project, said via email.