Go Language Compared to Python

Question

I am interested in hearing the differences between Go and Python and reading an overview of the similarities. I know that Google has heavy usage of Python and Go looks to be a bit related.

I was searching around a bit for a comparison and discussion of the influences of Python in Go and the goals of the Go language but I did not find a concise description of what I was looking for.

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So far, it looks like Go has added a few idioms that I like to programming languages and has fluffed up a few interesting discussions. Compile time performance, within reason, is not as important to me as the ability to statically verify more of the code. I also like their declaration syntax. I strongly appreciate the language design includes multi-core machines and parallelism in from the beginning. It is about time. To those of you working on language modules for this purpose, thank you as well. One of our biggest issues going forward will be making better use of distributed CPUs and lower power cores in large quantities. Getting our heads wrapped around that sooner, rather than later, will help us all.

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Any help?

Thanks, Jacob

Answer 1

Rob Pike, one of the founders of Go, talks about Go and mentions Python for comparison in this keynote "Public Static Void"

That Google employ both the creator of Python and the creators of Go - going further, they sponsored the Go from the beginning, whereas they brought in Guido only when Python was established - does not mean that they are necessarily very related. Google is a big company with a big codebase and plenty of room for both 'system' and 'scripting' languages and everything in-between.

You'll see from that keynote, the Goists like Python but they developed Go to fix things they thought were wrong with the dynamic types direction...

Answer 2

The Go Language Design FAQ will help answer your question to the goals of the Go language.

As for it's similarities to Python, the more I use Go the less similar it seems to Python. It really is an ancestor of C and Limbo more than anything. If you notice in that FAQ it does not mention Python as an ancestor to Go. They have very different goals, methods, and ideas.