[reycharles]

You are absolutely right, it's a silly comparison. The Go language spec is indeed vague.

I did this comparison a while ago. It wasn't very accurate. The Go spec has probably changed. Unfortunately, it seems they don't keep older specs around(!) If I adjust the font size in the ToC of the JLS I get 23 pages and the Go Spec is 84 pages (27%). Not quite "about the same length", still.

I took a compiler course in university where we implemented a compiler for a subset of java 1.3 (I believe), and the next year I was a TA in the compiler course. I got to read the (older) JLS quite a lot. I do find Java to be a more complicated language than Go. This does not mean I find it simpler to write programs in Go (c.f. Brainfuck).

[enneff]

> Unfortunately, it seems they don't keep older specs around(!)

https://github.com/golang/go/commits/master/doc/go_spec.html