Money spent developing compilers and libraries to sell at a profit is not marketing, even if the compiler is marketed: that money comes from users already committed.

C didn't need marketing. It rode on Unix, which also got hardly any. Unix rode on workstations, which had to be marketed hard against all the minicomputer and, later, mainframe competition.

C++ got no marketing either. It still has none, yet the number of C++ programmers is growing faster than ever before. Complaining about it is always popular, but as Bjarne says, there are only two kinds of language : the ones people complain about, and the ones no one uses.

Go may be counted a success when it is complained about as much as C++ or Python.

C++ had plenty of marketing, being adopted by all major C compiler vendors, it was adopted by the GUI frameworks used by Apple, IBM, Microsoft, alongside Borland, Zortech, Symantec, Watcom, Microwerks.

Plenty of marketing they had.

I.e., no marketing, just actual use and companies responding to actual use: The diametric opposite of marketing.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/978019959...

Clearly there's a massive difference between what Sun did and what AT&T did.

Universities wanted Unix and C, and not because AT&T spent so much on advertising. Not because AT&T forced it on them. The universities wanted it because, from their perspective, it was better than the other options. That's not marketing. It's not invading. It was pull from the universities that made it happen, not push from AT&T.

Producing something that people want is not the same as marketing, no matter how much you want to conflate the two.

UNIX was the process to reach that goal.

Getting something to be adopted is marketing, no matter the process.

I can recommend some business books, if you feel inspired.

Yes, AT&T shipped them a tape. Yes, technically that falls under the grounds of "marketing". The impression you are giving of how this played out, though, is totally false. You're making it sound like AT&T was aggressively pushing UNIX. It wasn't. It was much more passive - shipping a tape when requested. People were coming to them; they weren't going to people.

> The Unix operating system was first presented formally to the outside world at the 1973 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, where Ritchie and Thompson delivered a paper. This led to requests for the system, but under a 1956 consent decree in settlement of an antitrust case, the Bell System (the parent organization of Bell Labs) was forbidden from entering any business other than "common carrier communications services", and was required to license any patents it had upon request.[6] Unix could not, therefore, be turned into a product. Bell Labs instead shipped the system for the cost of media and shipping.[6] Ken Thompson quietly began answering requests by shipping out tapes and disks, each accompanied by – according to legend – a note signed, "Love, Ken”

Looks like marketing actions to me.

Which technically makes your claim true. But if you define marketing that broadly, it also makes your claim completely uninteresting. It boils down to "Things that are developed in house, and never talked about to anyone outside, and never shipped to anyone outside, do not take over the outside world". That's true, but it's trivially uninteresting.

You seem to be much more focused on the technical definition of marketing than on the very real differences between the "marketing" of C and UNIX vs. that of, say, Java.

And back to the original point: The marketing of Go has been much closer to the "marketing" of C than to the slick sales job of Java.

Word of mouth, being associated with idols are doing, feeling part of a community, feeling part of a counter culture, are all tools of the trade.

Which would not have taken place if those Google dollars weren't coming into Go's team salaries, conference talks, books and blog posts.