[zellyn]

Is Go “supposed to be a modern language”? I'm not sure even the language designers would agree with that characterization.

[Thaxll]

What is a modern language anyway?

[pjmlp]

One that takes into account features that have made into the mainstream during the last 20 years, instead of feeling like an Algol-68 subset.

[paavohtl]

Hey, that's not fair for ALGOL 68. It had sum types, pattern matching and everything-is-an-expression [1].

[1] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=356671

[unscaled]

I guess that's why Go is a subset :)

Although to be fair to Go, I don't think ALGOL 68 had a (slightly broken) implementation of CSP and HTTP/2.0 support in the standard library.

[geodel]

I see Javascript made it mainstream for all sort of clients and servers, Electron desktop apps made it to mainstream. So I remain skeptic to argument just because new features have been invented they are good or need to be implemented everywhere.

[pjmlp]

JavaScript enjoyed being the only option with regards to browser as platform.

Go is only inevitable for those that need to deal with Docker and Kubernetes, the NoSQL hype successors.

[tracker1]

Been a fan of JS since before The Good Parts book. Used it server-side in Classic ASP, Netscape Server and a couple more obscure runtimes before Node.js.

Personally, I find Rust as more approachable and easier to wrap my head around opposed to Go. Though some of the syntax changes I don't like as much. Waiting on async/await to land in a couple months though.

[geodel]

No surprise there. Rust is most loved language in so many surveys. Most devs planning to learn in near future. Many say it will be polished and ready by next year. I personally feel it may be ready for general developers like linux desktop will be ready for general users next year.

[Thaxll]

I don't care about the features in the last 20 years if I'm able to do my job efficiently which Go as a language provides. Never wonder why those great academics languages with a ton of features are not adopted?

[pjmlp]

So now languages like Java, Swift, Kotlin are academic languages?

[fwip]

Java is like 25 years old, you know.

[pjmlp]

I know, but apparently it has too many academic features not worthy of Go's adoption.

[staticassertion]

If you don't care about literally decades of progress you're just a bad software developer.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, for one, it handles text as being UTF-8 by default, even at the lowest level (and in no case assumes that byte = character !)

[krferriter]

I would say it is a modern language or attempts to be one, as it was designed recently, and was able to take lessons from a variety of older languages. Rust and Go are probably the most popular general purpose, good performance modern languages. Swift and TypeScript are also pretty modern.