ACM ByteCast Russ Cox - Episode 78
Dec 2, 2025
In a captivating conversation, Russ Cox, Distinguished Engineer at Google and a pivotal mind behind the Go programming language, shares his journey from the Commodore 64 to groundbreaking work at Bell Labs. He dives into the complexities of Google Code Search and the motivations behind developing Go for efficient concurrent programming. Russ discusses the impact of AI on programming, emphasizing the need for human oversight, and highlights the importance of mentorship in tech. His advice for aspiring builders? Understand problems deeply and follow your passions!
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Early Bell Labs Beginnings
- Russ Cox got his start by typing programs into a Commodore 64 and reading code on Bell Labs machines.
- Early access to real research systems and mentorship gave him formative exposure to programming.
Plan 9 Internship That Lasted
- As a teenager Russ interned on Plan 9 and later wrote the open source release code.
- Bell Labs taught him to value building simple, solid programs and clear technical writing.
CodeSearch Sparked Language Change
- At Google Russ built CodeSearch as a C++ intern and saw the complexity of large C++ codebases firsthand.
- That experience helped motivate him to join Rob Pike and others to build Go.