[didibus]

Ya, and if you look at the language space, there's nothing else that offers #1.

That set of features isn't related to the language itself (though the language was designed to allow those features).

This is where Go is appealing, it's not the language itself, it's the properties it brings with it. Cross-compilation, multi-spec, reasonable performance and low memory footprint. Single binaries. And I'd add fast compilation times.

Honestly it needs more competition that offers those same properties, because I'd love to have more choice of language (syntax + semantics), but get the same properties. But for now, you have to use Golang if you want something that gives you all those properties and that's just where Golang differentiates itself.

[bloblaw]

That's a great point, and one I hadn't considered. One language feature that Go brings is first-class multi-threading and communication amongst and with child threads.

The only languages I know that can compete with Go with similar properties are Nim, Zig, and Rust. I'd like to include Delphi / Free-Pascal, but cross-compilation can be a bit of headache at times.

[Tozen]

Well, when it comes to cross-platform desktop apps, Lazarus (Free Pascal) and Delphi (payware) do very well. There is nothing in Nim, Zig, Rust, or Go that I know of that can compare to the Lazarus or Delphi IDEs (for Object Pascal). As a matter of fact, there is an effort among Golang users to copy Lazarus. But, for Lazarus and Delphi, things get a bit shaky when we start talking about mobile or desktop and mobile development.

Delphi incorporates a mobile solution that was bought for the purpose, called FireMonkey, that doesn't completely integrate with their desktop solution (VCL). Each new version of Delphi is making progress with integrating the different solutions more tightly, but we are still talking about payware that is priced above what most individuals would want or feel comfortable paying for.

Lazarus, for various odd reasons (or even suspicious reasons), their developers appear to be dragging their feet with making a mobile solution. They should be able to incorporate technologies such as OpenGL ES with LCL and their custom drawn interface, but don't. A 3rd party developer came up with their own solution, that works for Android only (LAMW), but doesn't integrate with the desktop solution (LCL) nor is a part of Lazarus. So for Lazarus, outside of desktop development, things get a bit confusing. However, if team Lazarus ever got their act together and took mobile development more seriously, they probably would have among the best solutions out there.

[didibus]

I didn't know Mom and Zig had those properties, I'll have to check them out.

Rust I believe doesn't do true cross-compilation, isn't it just relying on you using virtualization like docker and other to do so?

[steveklabnik]

Rust does "true" cross-compilation, yes.

There is a tool, "cross," that uses Docker as part of its workflow, but it's not inherent in Rust's abilities to cross compile.

[xigoi]

Nim has all these properties. (I'm not sure about threading because I don't use it much.)