Go versus Brand X

[Robert Kern]

Aahz wrote:
> In article <7ms7ctF3k2a79U1 at mid.individual.net>,
> Gregory Ewing  <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>> However, Go's designers seem to favour using the absolute minimum
>> number of characters they can get away with.
>>
>> Although if they *really* wanted that, they would have dropped most of
>> the semicolons and used indentation-based block structure instead of
>> curly braces. I would have forgiven them several other sins if they'd
>> done that. :-)
> 
> That's essentially my issue with Go based on the code samples I've seen:
> no over-arching design sensibility at the syntax level.  It looks like an
> aggolomeration of semi-random C-like syntax.  There's nothing that
> shouts out, "This is a Go program," unlike Python, C, and even Perl.

I think there is an overall design sensibility, it's just not a human-facing 
one. They claim that they designed the syntax to be very easily parsed by very 
simple tools in order to make things like syntax highlighters very easy and 
robust. So indentation-based blocks are right out.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco