Russ Cox - Episode 78
From ACM ByteCast by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
December 2, 2025 · 45 min · Episode 78
About this episode
Russ Cox discusses his journey in software development, the evolution of the Go programming language, and insights on mentorship and leadership.
In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Bruke Kifle hosts Russ Cox, Distinguished Engineer at Google. Previously, he was the Go language technical lead at Google, where he led the development of Go for more than a decade, with a particular focus on improving the security and reliability of using software dependencies. With Jeff Dean, he created Google Code Search, which let developers grep the world's public source code. He also worked for many years on the Plan 9 operating system from Bell Labs and holds degrees from Harvard and MIT. Russ is a member of the ACM Queue Editorial Board.In the interview, Russ details his journey from the Commodore 64 to Bell Labs, where he met Rob Pike (a co-designer of Go) and contributed to Plan 9 working alongside other legendary figures. Russ shares lessons learned while working on Google Code Search (a highly complex C++ program) and how that informed his later approach to the development and evolution of Go. They delve into the role of Go in the AI era and the future of computing. Russ also discusses the open-source community and collaboration around Go, touches on mentorship and leadership, and offers advice for aspiring builders.
People in this episode
Host: Bruke Kifle
Guest: Russ Cox
Topics covered
- software development
- open-source community
- mentorship
- leadership
- AI
- Go programming language
Keywords
- Russ Cox
- Go language
- Google Code Search
- open-source
- software dependencies
- AI
- mentorship
- leadership
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Google, ACM Queue, Bell Labs
Products: Go, Google Code Search
Places: Harvard, MIT, Commodore 64
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