Why does every popular language & framework have to have a whimsical character to represent it?

Its like they know were just a bunch of children playing around

Go has the worst one.
I wish more ware like postcss.

Marketing and merchandise most likely. Mascots - if generic can be bought from alibaba and passed on to the fanboys as merch. -php elephant, go mouse thing and that sort of thing. If it fails and you made too much merch -you can sell it to the general public as cute generic toys.

Purely speculation

@24th-Dragon postcss looks like some anarchist scibbled the AOL logo on a wall 🤣. But like yeah why a gopher? Does a gopher adequately represent the language?

@araratas yeah php ruined elephants for everyone. It smiles so mincingly too.

@dUcKtYpEd so the mascot is called the gopher? Then it's probably because of the first two letters of the name. Its common in bussiness to name projects/microservices etc. By the first few letters. For example ad service - adele or similar

@araratas
Turns out it came from an old bell labs email system
https://blog.golang.org/gopher/....

Even though they are professional tools, people who make these aren't prohibited from having fun, as long as it doesn't affect the end user. And language mascots are fun and cute

@frogstair I’m just fuckin around man. Everyone loves them

For the stickers....