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Go's New Brand

blog.golang.org

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Re: Go's New Brand

#83

Post by andrewmcwatters »

shiado wrote: post #76

I know it is petty and irrational but I judge the quality of a software project by how boring it looks, where boringness is better. The more it looks like some university professor's web 0.1 hand-coded HTML project circa 1993 the better. Just look at this sexy boring website, it tells you that things are going to work perfectly with no bullshit or corporate-speak included. https://gcc.gnu.org/

I don't think it's petty or irrational. It signals to me that there are more important things than selling decal stickers and t-shirts. It says we don't care about exposing this technology to the largest possible crowd and diluting what can be produced with it.

I love C and Lua, and both are untrendy, long-lasting languages that don't attract particular crowds, and it means that when I produce something with them, unlike the trendier side of software development, it will actually last and run 5 years from now.

I think branding like this is a double edged sword. It says, "We're trendy and attractive, but established," and at the same time it says, "We guarantee you're going to love our mascot plushies and the high quality $15 decal stickers you're going to slap on your $1,299 MacBook Pro that you just got back from the Apple Store over a stuck key repair."

Re: Go's New Brand

#85

Post by rainbowmverse »

shiado wrote: post #76

I know it is petty and irrational but I judge the quality of a software project by how boring it looks, where boringness is better. The more it looks like some university professor's web 0.1 hand-coded HTML project circa 1993 the better. Just look at this sexy boring website, it tells you that things are going to work perfectly with no bullshit or corporate-speak included. https://gcc.gnu.org/

Compare to clang's website, which has the same aesthetic and is half as busy (visually): https://clang.llvm.org/

Re: Go's New Brand

#86

Post by 21 »

Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design.

I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF.

Good riddance.

I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators.

Guys, don't be so stereotypical, expand your horizon outside of Pokemon and Star Wars esthetics. I'll put it in a more obvious form: a lot of you like Apple, can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple?

Downvotes away...

Re: Go's New Brand

#88

Post by keyle »

Highly disappointing. They took the soul out of it, the gopher is not even included as part of the logo, like a wink in history. The Gopher IS GO! Its scruffy looks, small and mighty made it approachable and fun.

This looks like they hired an external team of wan#&$%, pardon the term, but humour me for a second: the brand guide pdf:

- ven diagram, check

- big wanky words, check

- big wanky opposite words, check

- proxy terms that are samey to any brand they'd do, check

This could have been delivered on April 1st.

Re: Go's New Brand

#89

Post by tripa »

21 wrote: post #86

Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design. I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF. Good riddance. I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators. Guys, don't be so stereot…

Many years ago, I've had a project manager reluctant to have us commit to the Hadoop ecosystem because, come on, "Pig", "Zoo"[keeper]... this can't be serious!

Sometimes people are the problem. Of course they're just names and have no incidence whatsoever on the relevance of a project. Until they do. For terrible reasons.

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