Comment by ginko

1 day ago

Go was announced as a replacement for C & C++ so I think it's reasonable to compare it to that.

It was intended as a as a replacement for C & C++ for Google's use case of network services btw.

  • Not really, no one at other other than the original authors though of that, the authors had an issue with C++ compile times and were sponsored by their manager to work on this Go side project of theirs.

    Google's networking services keep being writen in Java/Kotlin, C++, and nowadays Rust.

    • Go was written with the experience of a bunch of C people who weren't particularly fond of C++ while writing network services/systems at Google and have written Go as a 'C for the 21st century' with the sort of use case they used C++ for previously at Google.

      People like Rob Pike and Ken Thompson certainly knew that you can't put in a GC and cover all systems programming use cases, but they knew that Go could cover their use cases.

      Or are you suggesting that they were frustrated with C++ so they decided to write a language they couldn't use instead of C++ for their use case?

      > Google's networking services keep being writen in Java/Kotlin, C++, and nowadays Rust.

      And? Google is a massive company that uses many languages across many teams. That doesn't mean that some people at Google, incl Go's original creators, would not use Go nowdays to write what they would previously use C++ for.