The whole point of those early commits is that it's a joke! Just go read them. They are basically laying out the simple Hello, World! program and showing its evolution over time.
1972: Hello, World! is written in B
1974: Hello, World! is re-written for the new C language
1988: Hello, World! is written in ANSI C (two commits, go read them to see the diff)
2008: Go
Unless the dispute resolution is on good tracks to be solved, I don't find it funny because Google has the weight to squash anyone on its way, even unintentionally.
Go was a good name for a language invented at google but it is unfortunately not available. The name 'lango' suggested in a comment was, in my opinion, a brilliant alternative name proposal. And the most funny alternative name proposal was 'go2'.
That's interesting, I thought it was a direct (joke) response to the "Go" vs "Go!" situation. The "Go!" author stated that his language came first and then we find these conveniently aged commits the following day.
Either way, it's nice to see Google not taking itself too seriously.
I could be completely wrong of course, and the timing is convenient. I guess it depends on when these changes were pushed in, but then it's hard to tell when a possibly fake timestamp was made...
The whole kerfuffle about the name being taken and everyone firing off their suggestions for a new one is the greatest example of bikeshedding I have ever seen.
"This process could go on forever, but there is a strong desire
to adopt a "good enough" standard in a timely fashion rather than working
toward a "perfect" standard that is too late to matter. Many of us feel
that the current draft is "good enough""
"C is rapidly catching up with Pascal as the second most well known language but it has a long way to go before it becomes as well know (and perhaps as useful)as BASIC"
Meta comment: What is with all the smiley faces in these comments? 6 in 24 comments. Either people here get weirdly giddy over Google or the userbase is now mostly in their teens.
A good portion of communication in most animals is done visually. These visual cues do not transfer very well to text (okay, they don't transfer at all). The emoticon can be used to help. For instance:
You're an idiot.
Does not mean the same thing as:
You're an idiot :)
This is why emoticons are an important part of comments. They make them flow more like a conversation.
We probably shouldn't take the headline at face value. What we're seeing are some playfully hacked initial fictitious commits ostensibly from Brian Kernighan intended to paint a picture of the spiritual lineage that the creators of go want to acknowledge.
(And, in my opinion, if there's anybody allowed to invoke the name of Brian Kernighan in this way, it would be Rob Pike and Ken Thompson).
Lets hope this shuts up all the annoying people that got nothing better to do than to whine about a similar name having been used by another language, now it is clear who was first ;)
1972: Hello, World! is written in B 1974: Hello, World! is re-written for the new C language 1988: Hello, World! is written in ANSI C (two commits, go read them to see the diff) 2008: Go