2009/11/12 erik quanstrom <quans...@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
