Fair enough, if you define a "systems programming language" as one in which it's appropriate to write a real-time operating system kernel, Go is very likely not

Fair enough, if you define a "systems programming language" as one in which it's appropriate to write a real-time operating system kernel, Go is very likely not the language for you given its built-in garbage collection. Its suitability as a language for OS kernels has been discussed in this thread, with comments from the Go authors: http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/browse_thread/thread/5206d398e5d9ff2c http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/browse_thread/thr... However, if you define a systems programming language more broadly to include statically typed languages that compile to machine code with good support for a theoretically and practically sound concurrency model based on CSP, Go might very well be something worth investigating. And I wouldn't say that C++ achieved popularity "quickly" inasmuch as according to Stroupstrup he started working on it in 1979 (http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#invention http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#invention) but it wasn't in widespread use until the early/mid-1990's and wasn't standardized until 1998. By that timetable I'd say that Go has a few years yet before it can fairly be judged a success or a failure.