[samth]

There have been languages in this space for a very long time. Pascal and Algol 68 are both very old examples (see the Go vs Brand X comparison). Then there's Modula or Oberon not quite as long ago. In the last 20 years, everything from Java to OCaml to Scala to C# to F# to Haskell to Common Lisp to Lua have been developed.

So it's not especially interesting that Go is in this space as well. The most surprising thing about Go is that its developers seem never to have heard of any of the above languages (with the exception of Java).

[tptacek]

I don't think it's interesting that Go has this combination of attributes. I think it's interesting that the "right" boring systems programming language got a degree of tooling and traction sufficient to make it, unlike Modula and Oberon, a viable mainstream choice.

I am fine with boring languages. The first language love of my life is C. It's hard to get more boring than C. If a system I build is going to be clever or sophisticated, I'm fine with that being expressed in my code, rather than as the product of the environment I happen to be working in.

[Teckla]

It's hard to get more boring than C.

C... boring? I don't think so. Not with 200+ undefined or implementation defined behaviors. Not when even something as simple as "a = b + c" can evoke nasal demons.

C is so loosely defined that it keeps you on your toes constantly. Every single line is like walking down a dark corridor with poisonous snakes... and your torch just guttered out.

There's nothing boring about C. It's pure thrill and danger. If you're not experiencing that, you're probably writing terribly non-portable, brittle code, ready to unexpectedly invoke undefined or implementation defined behavior.

[samth]

First, Go isn't a systems programming language, any more than Java is.

Second, C is _far_ from boring. It's boring now because we all live in its shadow, but the idea that we should have high-level languages for writing low-level software in? That's C, right there.

Lots of other languages that now seem boring were interesting to start (Java, Perl, ...). What's frustrating about Go, and the hype it gets, is that it isn't interesting in any of those ways, and yet so many people, including its designers, seem to think it's revolutionary.

[pjmlp]

Seems to be pretty much similar to Oberon, used to build a few OS.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498878

As you should be aware, since you mentioned Oberon.

[pjmlp]

Only because it has Google as the Goodfather, otherwise no one would care about Go.