The Go Programming Language

The Origins of Go

Like biological species, successful languages beget offspring that incorporate the advantages of their ancestors; interbreeding sometimes leads to surprising strengths; and, very occasionally, a radical new feature arises without precedent. We can learn a lot about why a language is the way it is and what environment it has been adapted for by looking at these influences.

The figure below shows the most important influences of earlier programming languages on the design of Go.

Go is sometimes described as a “C-like language,” or as “C for the 21st century.” From C, Go inherited its expression syntax, control-flow statements, ...