Can you explain why you think the claim is incorrect. I would think it at least plausible. A huge portion of the languages in common use are all over 20 years from introduction. So Go is certain to be in the top for language introduced after 2002. Or at least I would think.

Even if you had said only the last 15 years, that would still include languages like Clojure, Rust, Typescript, Swift, and Julia. But from 20 to 30 years you start to get into the league of: C# and Java, R, Lua, PHP, Ruby... In other words, there is no way you can prove your assertion.

Just to note, I didn’t make the original assertion about the success of Go. I was only asking why your dismissal of the claim was so emphatic. I just stated that I found the assertion plausible where languages from the last 20 years were concerned and wondered why you were so certain Go could not be at the top.

Go is pretty clearly more successful than Clojure, Rust, Swift, and Julia, and at least plausibly more successful than TypeScript.

I should have stopped my range at 20 years :) I wouldn't put Go into the ring with Java or PHP.

If you had said 20 years you'd probably have been right. But going back 30 includes Python which is still WAY bigger than Go.

Python was released Feb. 20, 1991. I checked that before I posted. And I am not the original poster and did limit my comment to 20 years. But, I did forget Java in the 30 year category.

IMO when you say "20-30" that indicates an approximation for which 31 is still qualifying. But technically you are correct (the best kind).

I think these debates boil down to people just talking past each other about things that don't matter. "Blue is the most widely used color in company logos in the last 30 years" "Yeah well I like red better" Yeah, that's fine.

You’re probably right, I was thinking about amount of code in actual production use and limiting to languages from after 2002, but some people clearly had different things in mind.