Golang review

Go is a new systems programming language driven by Google.

Disclaimer: All performance claims are from a combination of personal experimentation in several projects, and from the Ubuntu x64 quad-core benchmarks, which I believe to be the best indication of future performance contrasts.

The Good

• Syntax is familiar and similar to C.
• Outperforms Python by an order and a half of magnitude.
• Compiles to binary.
• Standard library is Unix/POSIX inspired and broken up into modules.
• The standard is very short, and readable.
• Use of C-like primitives allows for cheap C interfaces.
• Replaces header/source paradigm for enormous compilation speed ups.
• Provides defer, an alternative to the exception/destructors of C++, and nested-if/goto chains of C.
• Does not have assertions. Coupled with easier resource management than C (and less boilerplate than C++), this is manageable and robust.

The Bad

• Uses the := operator.
• Syntax not similar to Python. For a new language I'm not sure there is any reason to continue using C-syntax such as braces. Providing gofmt, and requiring leading braces were excellent decisions, and a large step towards whitespace formatting anyway.
• Preference for custom compiler bars adoption and integration with existing technologies.
• Limited support for Windows. Despite the pain of developing for Windows, this blocks mass adoption.
• Standard library is still evolving.
• Won't replace C in its current state. Some of the syntax and interface advances would be most welcome however.

The Ugly

• Performance is nowhere near C, or C++. The standard library is severely under-optimized.
• The LLVM toolchain was not chosen to build upon.
• Several years of tool chain development and optimization are required before Go will be a contender.
• Documentation of the toolchain is lacking.

Language Comparison

• Go is much faster and has superior concurrency to Python. Retains many of strengths of Python's typing system but without dynamic typing. Python has easier syntax, and a much better standard library implementation.
• Go has better type safety than C. It also supports interfaces, closures, containers and many modern features that C lacks. Go is garbage collected, and has safe pointers. C is much faster, and has much better platform support.
• Go is much simpler than C++, and supports many modern features that are clunky and difficult to use in C++. There is far less boilerplate. C++ is faster and has better platform support.
• Go is faster than Java, and has less boilerplate. Its compilation speed, runtime size, and similarity to C will allow it to compete with Java's claim to portability.