Re: [9fans] Go

["Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>]

2009/11/12 erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>:
>> > Speaking of VMs (and Limbo) -- I'm wondering if Go is eventually going
>> > to have it anyway. Any reason not to?
>>
>> It can be perceived as a competitor to C if it has a runtime, but not
>> if it has a VM. So I don't think it would grow one.
>
> why do you think the goal is to be
> perceived as a competitor to c?
>
> i don't see that here:
> http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#What_is_the_purpose_of_the_project

Because it is constantly compared with C, C++, Java, and scripting
languages. Its packages are sold as better than C header files, which
is demonstrated in Russ' compile time video. It is a compiled language.
Its syntax is not horribly divergent from C.

I'm not saying that C is its main competition, but it clearly does compete
in the field of general purpose languages, of which C is a large player.
In this regard, it also aims to compete with C++, Java, Python, Ruby,
and Perl.

It is billed as a good general purpose language for modern systems. It
is just that, and therefore, I drew that conclusion.

> one thing that's not clear to me from
> the faq (perhaps it's clarified in robs talk?)
> and i haven't worked out for myself yet, is if
> one could write operating system code in
> go.  and if so, what would the language
> restrictions be.

It has support for pointers, so I guess so. I'd guess it's somewhat
easier than C++, where you have to have an implementation for new
before you can do much of anything else very C++-like. That said,
it does have a language runtime like C++, so I suspect it does need
some setup before some features (such as threads) can be used.

> - erik

--dho