WOW thanks! I actually downloaded go the very first week it was out, and used it in a benchmarking test for school where I tested different aspects of it against C,Java,Python,Perl

At the time, I thought it was a great language to work with but felt that it needed work. I/O was REALLY slow in that first version. I knew that it would gain popularity someday and would be something I'd be interested in really learning.

So, only recently I've noticed it more and more in the mainstream. I noticed yesterday that www.bankofamerica.com is written with it too. So as recently as yesterday I downloaded the new 1.5 version of it and planned on picking up a tutorial this weekend.

So .. thanks for the great timing.

You must live in the past. Java is used EXTENSIVELY for back end development. Most of corporate America is running on Java. What do you think is used by every single financial institution and insurance company?

The slow byte code you are talking about completely false. http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/05/26/when-is-java-faster-than-c/

there's been a LOT of work done on the JRE over the last decade. Especially with JIT