Carmen Andoh, Russ Cox and Steve Francia
25 March 2020
The last few months have been very bad around the world, and we are still in the middle of this terrible epidemic. It feels like there are days when everything to do with Go should wait.
But we need to do everything we can to prepare for what happens, to prepare ourselves and our families, and to help people get back to their familiar routines as quickly as possible. In this spirit, we intend to continue our commitment to the Go language and do what we can to help the Go community.
In this post, we want to share some information about how COVID-19 is affecting the Go community, some of the things we’re doing, what you can help us, and our plans for Go itself.
The conference and MeetUp
The Go community thrives on conferences and meetups. We had originally planned 35 meetings and thousands of Meetups this year, but now almost all of them have been changed, postponed or canceled. We will also keep the conference Wiki page updated as the schedule changes.
We want to do everything we can to help affected Go meetings. We also want to support Gopher that is trying to organize and tie Gopher together. In addition to cashing in on Google’s existing sponsors, we are also interested in supporting Gopher for the rest of the year in planning cloud conferencing solutions. If you are organizing an online conference for Go and have been affected by the pandemic, please contact Carmen Andoh at [email protected].
For conference organizers, the Gophers# conf-organisers channel is the place to discuss contingency plans, best practices, cancellations and deversions. It’s also a place to share ideas about cloud conferencing and continue to connect and support the Go community.
For cloud conference organizers, the Go Developer Agency can provide Zoom for Education licenses for cloud conferences that want to start. If you want to host a cloud conference on Go, we encourage you to take this opportunity to invite speakers from outside your area to introduce your panel. To learn more and get involved, join the Gophers #remotemeetup channel.
Online training
The Go trainers you met at previous conferences had previously done live training around the world for companies that wanted to use Go, and face-to-face teaching could quickly bring the new Gopher to the community. We are very grateful to the trainers for their work. Unfortunately, on-site training contracts were cancelled over the next few months, and trainers in our community lost their primary (or only) source of income. We encourage companies to consider virtual training and workshops during this difficult time. Most trainers are flexible in pricing, scheduling and class structure.
job
We know that the current downturn means that some Gopher are looking for new work. The Go community has established a number of go-specific job Posting sites, including Golang Cafe, Golang Projects, and We Love Go. Go Slack(gophers.slack.com/) also has many job search channels: Search for “jobs” in the channel list. Employers with new positions are encouraged to post them in as many appropriate locations as possible.
FOSS responder
Go is part of a broad open source ecosystem that we are very proud of. FOSS Responders are an effort to help open source ecosystems cope with the impact of viruses. If you want to do something to help the affected open source community, they can help you do some coordination and make connections with other efforts. If you know of other open source communities that need help, please let them know about FOSS Responders (fossresponders.com/).
COVID-19 Open Source help desk
The COVID-19 Open Source Help Desk is designed to help virologists, epidemiologists and other field experts find quick answers to any questions about open source scientific software from the platform’s experts so they can focus their time on what they know best. If you’re a developer or a scientific computing expert who can help solve some of the problems in the post, visit the site to see how you can help.
U.S. Digital Response
For us at Gopher USA, DIGITAL Response USA is working to connect qualified volunteers with state and local governments that need digital help during this crisis. To quote the page, “If you have relevant experience (healthcare, data, engineering and product development, general management, operations, supply chain/procurement, etc.), are willing to make some contribution to society and are able to accept a high-intensity work environment,” see the website to learn how to volunteer.
Plans for Go
On Google’s Go team, we recognize that the world around us is changing rapidly, and that our plans for the next few weeks are little more than hopeful speculation. That said, right now we’re working on what we think is the most important project for 2020. Like all of you, our capacity is declining, so work is going slower than planned.
Our analysis of the Go 2019 user survey is almost complete and we hope to release it soon.
At least for now, we intend to stick to the Go1.15 schedule, but the new features and improvements may be a little less than we originally planned. We will continue code review, problem classification and proposal review.
Gopls is the language-aware back end that supports most Go editors today, and we will continue to work towards version 1.0.
The new Go package and module site pkg.go.dev keeps getting better. We’ve been working on usability improvements and new features to better help users find and evaluate Go packages. We’ve also expanded the range of licenses that can be recognized and improved the license detector, with more to come.
We always remember the values of Gopher (golang.org/conduct#val…
We will continue to use this blog to bring you important news about the Go ecosystem. While taking care of yourself in life, we hope you will visit the blog more often and see what we are doing.
Thank you for using Go and joining the Go community. I wish you all the best in these difficult times.
Let's take off our masks and write code
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